5 Rafts
The trunks of trees, united by mutual attraction, as they floated down the stream, would suggest the idea of a raft. The women of Australia use rafts made of layers of reeds, from which they dive to obtain mussel-shells. In New Guinea the catamaran, or small raft formed of three planks lashed together with rattan, is the commonest vessel used. Others are larger, containing ten or twelve persons, and consist of three logs lashed together in five places, the centre log being the longest, and projecting at both ends.
This is exactly like the catamaran used on the coast of Madras, a model of one of which is in the Indian Museum; they are also used on the Ganges, and in the Asiatic isles. At Manilla they are known by the name of saraboas; but the perfection of raft navigation is on the coast of Peru. Ulloa, in 1735, describes the balzas used on the Guayaquil, in Ecuador, and on the coast as far south as Paita. They are called by the Indians of the Guayaquil jungadas, and by the Darien Indians puero. They are made of a wood so light that a boy can easily carry a log 1 foot in diameter and 3 or 4 yards long. They are always made of an odd number of beams, like the New Guinea and Indian rafts, the longest and thickest in the centre, and the others lashed on each side. Some are 70 ft. in length and 20 broad. When sailing, they are guided by a system of planks, called guaras, which are shoved down between the beams in different parts of the raft as they are wanted, the breadth of the plank being in the direction of the lines of the timbers. By means of these they are able to sail near the wind, and to luff up, bear away, and tack at pleasure. When a guara is put down in the fore part of the raft, it luffs up, and when in the hinder part, it bears away. This system of steering, he says, the Indians have learnt empirically, ‘their uncultivated minds never having examined into the rationale of the thing.’
It was one of these vessels which Bartolomew Ruiz, pilot of the second expedition for the discovery of Peru, met with; and which so astonished the sailors, who had never before seen any vessel on the coast of America provided with a sail. Condamine speaks of the rafts in 1743, on the Chinchipe, in Peru. They are also used on the coast of Brazil, where they are also called jungadas, from which locality there is a model of one in the British Museum, and another in the Christy collection. Professor Wilson thinks it was by means of these vessels, driven off the coast of America westward, that the Polynesian and Malay islands were peopled; and this brings us to the consideration of the peculiar class of vessel which is distributed over a continuous area in the Pacific and adjoining seas, viz. the outrigger canoe, which, I shall endeavour to show, was derived from the raft.