Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/258

 once, and that seemed to be the tread of a beast as big as a great mastiff dog. Here are a few small land-birds, but none bigger than a blackbird: and but few sea-fowls. Neither is the sea very plentifully stored with fish, unless you reckon the manatee and turtle as such. Of these creatures there is plenty, but they are extraordinarily shy, though the inhabitants cannot trouble them much, having neither boats nor iron.

The inhabitants of this country are the miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods of Monomatapa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these; who have no houses and skin garments, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth, ostrich eggs, etc., as the Hodmadods have; and setting aside their human shape, they differ but little from brutes. They are tall, straight-bodied, and thin, with small long limbs. They have great head, round foreheads, and great brows. Their eyelids are always half closed, to keep the flies out of their eyes, they being so troublesome here that no fanning will keep them from coming to ones face; and without the assistance of both hands to keep them off, they will creep into ones nostrils, and mouth, too, if the lips are not shut very close. So that, from their infancy, being thus annoyed with these insects, they do never open their eyes as other people do; and therefore they cannot see far, unless they hold up their heads as if they were looking at somewhat over them.

They have great bottle-noses, pretty full lips, and wide mouths. The two fore-teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young: whether they draw them out I know not: neither have they any beards. They are long-visaged, and of a very unpleasing aspect, having no one graceful feature in their faces. Their hair is black, short, and curl'd, like that of the negroes; and not long and lank, like the common Indians. The colour of their skins, both of their faces and the rest of their body, is coal black, like that of the negroes of Guinea.