Long acquaintance with the local tides, winds, currents, and other circumstances of the pilotage, and the constant pressure of necessity, enable the inhabitants of each particular spot to acquire such masterly command over their machinery, that no new-comer, however well provided, or however skilful generally, can expect to cope with them.  Hence it arises, that boats of a man-of-war are found almost invariably inferior, in some respects, to those of the port at which she touches.  The effect of seeking to adapt our boats to any one particular place would be to render them less serviceable upon the whole.  After remaining some time at a place, we might succeed in occasionally outsailing or outrowing the natives; but what sort of a figure would our boats cut at the next point to which the ship might be ordered—­say a thousand miles farther from, or nearer to, the equator, where all the circumstances would be totally different.  We should have to change again and again, losing time at each place, and probably not gaining, after all, any of the real advantages which the natives long resident on the spot alone know the art of applying to practice.

The hull or body of the Ceylonese canoe is formed, like that of Robinson Crusoe’s, out of the trunk of a single tree, wrought in its middle part into a perfectly smooth cylinder, but slightly flattened and turned up at both ends, which are made exactly alike.  It is hollowed out in the usual way, but not cut so much open at top as we see in other canoes, for considerably more than half of the outside part of the cylinder or barrel is left entire, with only a narrow slit, eight or ten inches wide, above.  If such a vessel were placed in the water, it would possess very little stability, even when not loaded with any weight on its upper edges.  But there is built upon it a set of wooden upper works, in the shape of a long trough, extending from end to end; and the top-heaviness of this addition to the hull would instantly overturn the vessel, unless some device were applied to preserve its upright position.  This purpose is accomplished by means of an out-rigger on one side, consisting of two curved poles, or slender but tough spars, laid across the canoe at right-angles to its length, and extending to the distance of twelve, fifteen, or even twenty feet, where they join a small log of buoyant wood, about half as long as the canoe, and lying parallel to it, with both its ends turned up like the toe of a slipper, to prevent its dipping into the waves.  The inner ends of these transverse poles are securely bound by thongs to the raised gunwales of the canoe.  The out-rigger, which is always kept to windward, acting by its weight at the end of so long a lever, prevents the vessel from turning over by the pressure of the sail; or, should the wind shift suddenly, so as to bring the sail aback, the buoyancy of the floating log would prevent the canoe from upsetting on that side by retaining the out-rigger