The mast, instead of being merely stuck upright when wanted, is permanently fixed, but is so short that it causes no inconvenience when the sail is struck and the paddles alone are employed. It is fixed, or “stepped,” into a hole in a board at the bottom of the canoe, and is lashed to a transverse spar that extends across the canoe from one gunwale to the other. At the head of the mast is a stout projecting arm, through which is bored a hole. The sail is made by matting stretched between two slight spars, and when not wanted it can be rolled up and laid up on the platform of the outrigger. The halyard, a rope by which the sail is hauled to its place, is fixed to the middle of the sail, and passes through the hole in the projecting arm of the mast-head. Hopes are fastened to each end, constituting the “tack” and the “sheet.” When the crew wish to put their canoe about, they do so in a very expeditious manner, merely letting go the ropes and hauling them in again, so as to turn the sail and convert the sheet into the tack, and _vice versâ_. As both ends of the canoe are alike, the vessel at once obeys the new impulse, and goes off in the required direction. The canoe is steered with one special paddle some nine feet in length, of which the oblong, rounded blade occupies half. * * * * * The inhabitants of the New Guinea coasts are remarkable for their skill in swimming and diving. When H. M. S. _Rattlesnake_ was off New Guinea, the anchor of one of the boats caught in the coral, and could not be dislodged. An old man who was standing on the beach saw that something was wrong, and swam off to the boat. He soon understood the case, and, after diving several times, succeeded in clearing the anchor, a feat for which he was rewarded by an axe. He always dived feet foremost, without an effort, and remained under water for about half a minute. It is rather curious that the love of pigs which is found among the New Zealanders should be quite as strongly developed among the natives of New Guinea. The girls and women make great pets of them, and it is not at all an uncommon event to see a young girl tripping along in all the graceful freedom of the savage, holding a young pig in her arms, and caressing and talking to it as an European girl talks to her doll, or to her pet lapdog. These pigs are long-legged, black-skinned, stiff-haired animals, not at all agreeing with our ideas of a pig’s proper form.