Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/259

 They have no sort of clothes, but a piece of the rind of a tree ty'd lyke a girdle about their waists, and a handful of long grass, or three or four small green boughs, full of leaves, thrust under their girdle to cover their nakedness.

They have no houses, but lye in the open air without any covering, the earth being their bed and the heaven their canopy. Whether they cohabit one man to one woman, or promiscuously, I know not; but they do live in companies, twenty or thirty men, women and children together. Their only food is a small sort of fish, which they get by making wares of stone across little coves or branches of the sea; every tide bringing in the small fish, and there leaving them for a prey to these people, who constantly attend there to search for them at low water. This small fry I take to be the top of their fishery: they have no instruments to catch great fish, should they come, and such seldom stay to be left behind at low water, nor could we catch any fish with our hooks and lines all the while we lay there. In other places at low water they seek for cockles, mussels, and periwincles. Of these shell-fish there are fewer still, so that their chiefest dependance is upon what the sea leaves in their wares, which, be it much or little, they gather up, and march to the places of their abode. There the old people, that are not able to stir abroad by reason of their age, and the tender infants, wait their return; and what Providence has bestowed on them, they presently broil on the coals and eat it in common. Sometimes they get as many fish as makes them a plentiful banquet, and at other times they scarce get every one a taste; but, be it little or much that they get, every one has his part, as well the young and tender as the old and feeble, who are not able to go abroad as the strong and lusty. When they have eaten they lie down till the next low water, and then all that are able march out, be it night or day, rain or shine, 'tis all one; they must attend the wares or else they must fast, for the earth affords them no