Owing to their want of beam, these canoes are as easily upset as the slight skiffs in which races are rowed on English rivers. The agile Maori, accustomed from childhood to balance himself in these crank vessels, traverses them with ease and security, but an European generally upsets four or five canoes before he learns how to enter or leave them properly. The natives manage these canoes with wonderful skill, and, apparently regardless of the risk of capsizing the canoe, dash their paddles into the water with furious energy, driving up spray on all sides, and making the canoe and its rowers look at a distance like some gigantic centipede dashing through the water. The vessels, however, of which the Maories are most fond, and on which they expend the most labor, are the large canoes in which the warriors embark when on a campaign. Those canoes are made from the cowrie pine (the same tree which furnishes the aromatic gum already mentioned); and the tree being a very large one, the natives are able to make their canoes of considerable size. Some of these canoes are upward of eighty feet in length and in consequence are able to carry a great number of warriors. They are built in rather an elaborate manner. First the trough-like vessel is formed from the tree trunk; and if it were left in that state, it would be simply a very large kaupapa. As, however, it is intended for sea voyages, and may have to endure rough weather; it is much wider in proportion than the boat which is only used on rivers, and is, moreover, rendered more seaworthy by gunwales. These are made separately, and are lashed firmly to the sides of the boat by the ordinary flax ropes. Both the head and stern of the canoe are decorated with carving, exactly similar in character to the specimens of native art which have already been described. They are pierced with the most elaborate patterns, which have as their basis the contour of the human countenance and the semi-spiral curve. Perhaps a single canoe head will have fifty or sixty human faces on it, each with the tongue protruded, with the cheeks and forehead covered with tattooed lines, and with a pair of goggle eyes made of the haliotis shell. The mode which a native adopts when carving these elaborate patterns is as follows: After shaping out the general form of the article to be carved, he fixes on some part which he thinks will be suitable for the purpose, and carves a human head upon it. When this is completed, he pitches upon a second spot at some distance from the first, and carves another head, proceeding in this way until he has carved as many heads as he thinks the pattern will require.