Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

648 EARLY MIGRATION of which canoes might be formed, with fire, with stones, and with shells. Considering the abundance of trees once standing in places, perhaps easy of access, whence the hand of man may have long since cleared them away, and the quantity of animal,* as well as vegetable food which may have abounded where then there had been no arch-destroyer, — how easy, comparatively speaking, may it have been, in those early ages, to fell, hollow out, and launch great trunks of trees, which, secured two and two, and covered over, would form excellent vessels. Like the double canoes of modern Polynesians, they might have carried a platform, above the reach of common waves, on which families and their provisions could voyage in security. Neither refined art nor any tool would have been required in the construction : with fire to hollow and to divide, stones, shells, and bones would have sufficed for so simple a work, and thus enabled the least informed savages to make sea- worthy and even burthensome vessels. Unlike some modern canoes, however, these primitive ves- sels would have been capable of sailing only before the wind, or nearly so, and would therefore have been almost at the dis- posal of every breeze, when once at sea. Hence, in attempting to follow their course, we must attentively consider prevailing winds, and by no means omit to regard currents, of which the first sailors could have known nothing, and which must have caused the mis-direction, if not loss, of many early adventurers. In alluding to easily constructed rafts, and double canoes, I do not for an instant dream of excluding better vessels, which no doubt, were soon constructed after men began to roam by sea ;-f- but I wish to show, so far as I am able, how readily means of transport were accessible to the first wanderers. * For proofs of the extraordinarily rapid manner in which animals multiply when comparatively unmolested by man, we need only turn to South America. t The Piragua now used at Chiloe, and by the savages of the Chonos Archipelago, exactly resembles in every minute detail the Maseulah boat of Madras. Its ' sacho,' or wooden anchor with a stone in the middle, is precisely like that used in Chinese and Japanese Junks but doubtless these coincidences may be accidental.