The industrial dexterity of this ingenious people appeared in the manufacture of many other articles besides the Tapa. Rushes, grass, the bark of trees, and fibrous leaves furnished the material for finer mats than any made in Europe. The coarser kind of matting was employed for sleeping on in the night, or sitting on through the day; the finer sort was converted into garments in rainy weather, the Tapa being soon penetrated by wet. They were also very expert in making basket and wicker work; their baskets were of a vast number of different patterns, many of them exceedingly neat, and the making of them was an art practised by everyone, both men and women. Essentially maritime in their tastes, they excelled in the construction of their canoes, which were the more to be admired as an adze made of stone, a chisel or gouge made of bone, a rasp of coral, and the skin of a sting ray as a file and polisher, were the only tools which they possessed. With these rude implements they generally took up several days in felling a tree, which was then split into planks. The boards, having been very dexterously smoothed, were afterwards fitted to the boat with the same exactness that might be expected from an expert joiner. To fasten them together, holes were bored with a piece of bone fixed into a stick for that purpose, and through these holes a kind of plaited cordage was passed, so as to hold the planks strongly together. The seams were caulked with dry rushes, and the whole outside of the vessel was painted over with a kind of gummy juice which supplied the place of pitch. Considering the inferiority of their tools, the building of one of their large war canoes, which sometimes had the enormous length of 108 feet and could hold forty men, was undoubtedly a piece of workmanship not inferior to the huge vessels constructed in Europe with the assistance of iron. Generally two of these war canoes were lashed together, with two masts set up between them, and a high platform raised above, on which the warriors, armed with spears and slings, were stationed; the rowers sat below, ready to receive the wounded from above and to send reinforcements to take their place. Single boats had an outrigger on one side, and only one mast in the middle; and in these frail constructions, they did not hesitate to sail far beyond the sight of land, shaping their course in the daytime by the sun, at night by the stars, to which they gave their particular names. A fleet of war canoes with its curved figures, its waving pennants, and its men gracefully clothed in flowing garments, afforded a highly picturesque spectacle, which might give some idea of the vessels in which the Argonauts sailed to Colchis, or the Homeric heroes embarked for the destruction of Troy.