some reference to an 'original destitution' of the Australian natives with respect to canoes, in which Mr. Jukes believes Mr. Crawfurd to be right; but, upon looking through it, I can only find the most positive assertions (pp.. 355, 361) that the Australians 'have no canoes to this day,' and that 'even now' they cross their own rivers only on rude rafts."[1]
Mr. Beete Jukes replied thus:—"Will you allow me to state my opinion a little more deliberately than in my hastily-written note which appeared in your number of the 8th inst.? The statements as to existing facts made by Sir D. Cooper and Mr. Brierly are, of course, beyond all question. I looked at the subject from an ethnological point of view—whether the Australians had anything of their own invention worthy of being called a canoe. Before writing the ethnological chapter in the 'Voyage of H.M.S. Fly,' published in 1847, I searched most, if not all, of the early voyages and travels for information on this matter among others. From this search, and from my own observations and enquiries made during our voyage, I came to the conclusion that, before they were visited by Europeans, the Australians had no canoes anywhere along the south, west, and north-west coasts, from Cape Howe to Cape Leuwin, and thence to Melville Island, or thereabouts. On the east coast, at Twofold Bay, Botany Bay, and the other places visited by Cook, Flinders, King, and others, as far north as Sandy Cape, the only canoes mentioned are, as I believe, the strips of bark tied together at the ends, with rough sticks to keep them open, which have been already described. I was much struck with the bark canoes about Rockingham Bay, as they resembled those I had previously seen among the Mic-Mac Indians of Newfoundland, although greatly inferior to them. The detailed description of those canoes which I find in my own notes agrees precisely with that quoted by Sir D. Cooper from Mr. Hill. The fact mentioned by Sir D. Cooper, however, that he had seen similar canoes outside Jervis and Twofold Bays, in the year 1834, is new to me, and would, had I been aware of it, have, pro tanto, modified my statements as to canoes of New South Wales. I still believe that the canoes made of hollowed trees found among the Australians of the north-east coast are either procured from the Papuan Islanders, or that, at all events, it was from these islanders that the Australian learnt how to make them. Macgillivray says, in the passage quoted by Mr. Brierly from the 'Voyage of the Rattlesnake,' that they now use iron axes, which they must of course procure from 'white men.' The larger canoes among the Torres Straits Islanders themselves must, I think, have been procured from New Guinea, whence so many of their implements are derived, ornamented with cassowary and not with emu feathers. The doubt expressed in the P.S. of my note, as to the possibility of getting trees in Australia large enough and light enough to make canoes, if hollowed out, is certainly of too sweeping a character; for I had hardly posted the note before I recollected the beautiful pine-trees which grow in such profusion about Whitsunday Passage and the neighbourhood—a part of the Australian coast much superior in aspect, and, I believe, in value, to any
- ↑ Athenæum, p. 397, 22nd March 1862.
