they were then completely superseded by others hollowed out of trees, which they procured ready made from the Malays in exchange for tortoise-shell and in return for assistance in collecting trepang.
Captain Stokes,[1] in speaking of the visits of Malays to Port Essington, also says that the aborigines obtained their canoes chiefly from the Malays, whom he elsewhere calls "Bugis." At the time at which he wrote, namely, the years 1837-43, such canoes were used as far as Clarence Strait, but beyond that place he saw no single instance of any "proa or canoe."[2]
It is therefore possible to fix the limits beyond which the knowledge of the outrigger canoe did not extend, namely, from Hinchinbrook Island on the north-east coast of Queensland to Clarence Strait in north-western Australia.
Some further light is afforded by a statement made by a man from Prince of Wales Island whom I once met. It was, that his tribesmen are accustomed to migrate periodically in their sea-going canoes, according to the prevalent winds, either southwards along the coast of Queensland, or northwards to the further islands of Torres Strait, or even to the mainland of New Guinea.
It seems to me that this practice must have existed for ages; indeed, since that time when the Papuan population settled on the Straits Islands and thus came to be neighbours of the tribes inhabiting the Australian mainland.
It is difficult to believe, if this coast at that time had been unoccupied by Australians, that the Papuans would not have settled on it as well as upon islands at no great distance northwards.
The Kaurarega of Prince of Wales Island are usually considered to be Papuans, with a strong Australian mixture, which, judging from the example I saw, would be very marked. This mixture is easily to be understood when one considers the annual voyages by these people down the Cape York coast on the one side and across Torres Strait
