Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/249

 some skulls and the bust of a man, looking as if put up as an ornament, with a shield and other weapons near it, the meaning of all which may be guessed at, but not fixed with certainty.

Their food consists of roots, tree fruits, herbs, etc., but chiefly fish, caught by them at low water in holes in the bed of the river, as we, when lying at anchor thereabouts, could distinctly see by the motion of the thousands of little lights which they used. They know very little of cooking or drying their food, but generally eat it raw, except pork, which they eat when it has been a little smoked, and is less than half roasted.

"In about 8° or 9° south latitude, we found a tall, terrible, and disgusting race of people, whose chiefs have the inside of the upper lip slit from the nose downwards, the two parts being kept asunder by what they call a gabbe-gabbe. The two sides of the nose, also, are bored through with sasappen, or thin awls, which gives their voices a frightful and hollow sound, as if coming out of a deep cellar.

"It is believed that Nova Guinea is divided from Hollandia Nova, or the south land, at about the latitude of 10° south. Of the country further south we have up to the present day no certain information, except that supplied by Abel Tasman, who sailed round the whole land and the coasts of the Dutch East India Company's possessions, and who testifies to have found trees (beams) in which at intervals footsteps were cut to climb up by, about seven feet apart, and also with footsteps in the sand about fourteen or fifteen Dutch inches long, and every footstep six or six and a half feet from the other. I am informed by a mate who, about thirty or thirty-four years ago, lost his ship on the most westerly promontory of the south land, that he with some of the crew reached Batavia in the ship's boat, and was despatched from thence to the place where he was ship-wrecked with provisions, and in order to deliver their