After another vain search, this time for Saint Augustine's Island, he sighted the Cora of Los Vaherites, also called Seven, or Raven Island, discovered in 1773 by the Spaniard Felipe Tompson.
The navigator next saw the Mortlock Archipelago, the old Lugunor group, known to Torrés as the Lugullos, the people of which resemble those of Ualan. He landed on the principal of these islands, which he found to be one huge garden of cocoa palms and breadfruit-trees.
The natives enjoy a centre degree of civilization. They weave and dye the fibres of the banana and cocoa-nut palms, as do those of Ualan and Puinipet. Their fishing-tackle does credit to their inventive faculties, especially a sort of case constructed of small sticks and split bamboo-canes, which the fish cannot get out of when once in. They also use nets of the shape of large wallets, lines, and harpoons.
Their canoes, in which they spend more than half their lives, are wonderfully adapted to their requirements. The large ones, which are a very great trouble to build, and which are kept in sheds constructed specially for them, are twenty-six feet long, two and a half wide, and four deep. They are furnished with gimbals, the cross-pieces being connected by a rafter. On the other side there is a small platform, four feet square, and furnished with a roof, under which they are accustomed to keep their provisions. These pirogues have a triangular sail, which is made of matting woven from bandanus leaves, and is attached to two yards. In tacking about they drop the sail, and turn the mast towards the other end of the canoe, to which, at the same time, they have passed the fastening of the sail, so that the pirogue moves forward by its other extremity.
Lütke next sighted the Namuluk group, the inhabitants of which do not differ at all from the people of Lugunor, and he proved the identity of Hogolu Island--already described by Duperrey--with Quirosa. He then visited the Namnuïto group, the first stratum of a number of islands, or of one large island which will some day exist in this part of the world.
Lütke, who was in want of biscuits and other articles, which he hoped to obtain at Guam, or from vessels at anchor in that port, now set sail for the Marianne Islands, where he counted upon being able to repeat some new experiments with the pendulum, in which Freycinet had found an important anomaly of gravitation.[6]