This form of vessel needs no outrigger, the second canoe taking the place of that attachment. Ethnographers have derived both the double canoe and the outrigger from the primitive log raft.

Early European voyagers found the double canoe in use throughout Polynesia. They were specially numerous at Tahiti, where, in 1774, as related by Forster, 159 large double canoes, from 50 ft. to 90 ft. in length, were seen ranged in order off shore. These were war-canoes, with large platforms and fighting-stages. In addition were seventy smaller double canoes, each with a roof or cabin at the stern. The smallest district of Tahiti at that time possessed forty of the larger vessels.

In New Zealand all canoes seen by Tasman seem to have been double craft. Cook saw a number of such canoes on South Island coasts, but mentions only one in the North, seen in the Bay of Plenty. Our information concerning these vessels is meagre in the extreme, for no one of the early writers has left us any detailed description thereof, and the illustration given in Tasman's voyage is too grotesque to be taken seriously. The two canoes are said to have been connected by cross-spars, with from 1 ft. to 2 ½ ft. of space between the hulls, with a central platform. In the North Auckland district two forms seem to have been used. The waka hourua consisted of two vessels secured together side by side with cross-beams, while in the mahanga type the two canoes were about 30 in. apart. The cross-beams were the most important feature in a double canoe; should these give way at sea in rough weather, disaster followed. Double canoes were employed on South Island coasts as late as the “thirties” of last century, long after their disuse in the North. As to the outrigger canoe, Cook does not seem to have seen one until he reached Queen Charlotte Sound.

The pahi of the Cook Group was a large double canoe furnished with masts and sails. This name was applied by the Moriori, or Mouriuri, folk of the Chatham Isles to a singular double-keeled vessel of a most uncommon type, between canoe and raft, constructed of timber and flax-stalks, and rendered buoyant with dried and reinflated bull-kelp. Curiously enough, these folk worked paddles as we do oars, using a thole-pin. Lack of timber led to the use of some very extraordinary craft among the Moriori, and effectually prevented any voyages to New Zealand.

The big double canoes of Paumotu, Samoan, and Fijian types did not go about in tacking, but the sheet of the sail was shifted from one end to the vessel to the other. In his single seagoing canoe the Maori of New Zealand employed two or four steersmen, but the big double canoe of Tahiti called for eight steersmen.

The double canoe, like the outrigger, can be traced across the Pacific from New Zealand to the Hawaiian Isles, and from eastern Polynesia to India. It was employed by Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians. Indonesians, and in northern Australia, Ceylon, Burmah, and India. There are two forms of this vessel—one in which the two canoes are of equal size, another in which one is much smaller than the other. The big double sea-going canoe of the Samoans, long discarded, was of the latter type; the larger of the two being, in some cases, as much as 150 ft. in length. This was the style of vessel in which the natives of the Samoan and Cook Groups made then deep-sea voyages.

Cook reckoned that Polynesian canoes might sail forty leagues a day or more. Given favourable conditions, this would apparently be a moderate estimate. Morrell, a Pacific voyager of the early part of the nineteenth