The great resemblance which prevails in the mode of agriculture and navigation, amongst all the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, leaves me very little to add on those heads.  Captain Cook has already described the figure of the canoes we saw at Atooi.  Those of the other islands were precisely the same; and the largest we saw was a double canoe, belonging to Terreeoboo, which measured seventy feet in length, three and a half in depth, and twelve in breadth; and each was hollowed out of one tree.

The progress they have made in sculpture, their skill in painting cloth, and their manufacturing of mats, have been all particularly described.  The most curious specimens of the former, which we saw during our second visit, are the bowls in which the chiefs drink ava.  These are usually about eight or ten inches in diameter, perfectly round, and beautifully polished.  They are supported by three, and sometimes four small human figures, in various attitudes.  Some of them rest on the hands of their supporters, extended over the head; others on the head and hands; and some on the shoulders.  The figures, I am told, are accurately proportioned, and neatly finished, and even the anatomy of the muscles, in supporting the weight, well expressed.

Their cloth is made of the same materials, and in the same manner, as at the Friendly and Society Islands.  That which is designed to be painted, is of a thick and strong texture, several folds being beat and incorporated together; after which it is cut in breadths, about two or three feet wide, and is painted in a variety of patterns, with a comprehensiveness and regularity of design that bespeaks infinite taste and fancy.  The exactness with which the most intricate patterns are continued is the more surprising, when we consider that they have no stamps, and that the whole is done by the eye, with pieces of bamboo-cane dipped in paint; the hand being supported by another piece of the cane, in the manner practised by our painters.  Their colours are extracted from the same berries, and other vegetable substances, as at Otaheite, which have been already described by former voyagers.

The business of painting belongs entirely to the women, and is called kipparee; and it is remarkable that they always gave the same name to our writing.  The young women would often take the pen out of our hands, and shew us that they knew the use of it as well as we did; at the same time telling us that our pens were not so good as theirs.  They looked upon a sheet of written paper as a piece of cloth striped after the fashion of our country; and it was not without the utmost difficulty that we could make them understand that our figures had a meaning in them which theirs had not.

Their mats are made of the leaves of the pandanus; and, as well as their cloths, are beautifully worked in a variety of patterns, and stained of different colours.  Some have a ground of pale green, spotted with squares or rhomboids of red; others are of a straw colour, spotted with green; and others are worked with beautiful stripes, either in straight or waving lines of red and brown.  In this article of manufacture, whether we regard the strength, fineness, or beauty, they certainly excel the whole world.