"The canoes that they go fishing in are sharp at both ends, and both the sides and the bottom are very thin and smooth. They are shaped somewhat like the praus at Guam, with one side flattish and the other with a pretty big belly; and they have small slight outlayers[193] on one side. Being thus thin and light, they are better managed with oars than with sails: yet they sail well enough, and are steered with a paddle. There commonly go twenty or thirty men in one of these canoes; and seldom fewer than nine or ten. Their oars are short, and they do not paddle, but row with them as we do.[194] The benches they sit on when they row are made of split bamboos laid across, and so near together that they look like a deck. The bamboos lie movable: so that when any go in to row they take up a bamboo in the place where they would sit, and lay it by to make room for their legs. The canoes of those of the rest of these islands were like those of Nicobar, and probably they were alike in other things; for we saw no difference at all in the natives of them who came hither while we were here. "But, to proceed with our affairs: it was, as I said before, the 5th day of May, about ten in the morning, when we anchored at this island. Captain Read immediately ordered his men to heel the ship, in order to clean her, which was done this day and the next. All the water-vessels were filled; they intended to go to sea at night, for the winds being yet at N.N.E., the captain was in hopes to get over to Cape Comorin before the wind shifted. Otherwise it would have been somewhat difficult for him to get thither, because the westerly monsoon was not at hand.