Page:A voyage round the world, in His Britannic Majesty's sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (IA b30413849 0001).pdf/169

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interwoven with feathers; and in their ears they wore small pieces of white albatross skins stained with ruddle or ochre. We offered them some fishes and wild fowl, but they threw them back to us, intimating that they did not want provisions. The approaching night obliged us to retire, not without promising our new friends a visit the next morning. The man remained silent, and looked after us with composure and great attention, which seemed to speak a profound meditation; but the youngest of the two women, whose vociferous volubility of tongue exceeded every thing we had met with, began to dance at our departure, and continued to be as loud as ever. Our seamen passed several coarse jests on this occasion, but nothing was more obvious to us than the general drift of nature, which not only provided man with a partner to alleviate his cares and sweeten his labours, but endowed that partner likewise with a desire of pleasing by a superior degree of vivacity and affability.

The next morning we returned to the natives, and presented them with several articles which we had brought with us for that purpose. But so much was the judgment of the man superior to that of his countrymen, and most of the South Sea nations, that he received almost every thing with indifference, except what he immediately con-