Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/183

Rh this again were painted stripes in many different patterns with infinite regularity, much in the same way as lustring silks in England, all the straight lines upon them being drawn with such accuracy that we were almost in doubt whether or not they were stamped on with some kind of press. The red cloth was painted in this manner with black, the lead-coloured with white. Of this cloth, generally the lead-coloured, they had on a short jacket that reached about down to their knees, and made of one piece, with a hole through which they put their heads, the sides of which hole differed from anything I have seen, being stitched with long stitches. This was tied round their bodies by a piece of yellow cloth which passed behind their necks and came across the breasts in two broad stripes crossing each other; it was then collected round the waist in the form of a belt, under which was another of the red cloth, so that the whole made a very gay and warlike appearance. Some had on their heads caps, as described above, of the tails of tropic birds, but these did not become them so well as a piece of white or lead-coloured cloth, which most of them had wound on their heads like a small turban.

Their arms consisted of long lances made of the etoa, or hard wood, well polished and sharpened at one end; of these some were nearly twenty feet long, and scarcely as thick as three fingers; they had also clubs or pikes of the same wood about seven feet long, well polished, and sharpened at one end into a broad point. How expert they may be in the use of these we cannot tell, but the weapons themselves seem intended more for show than use, as the lance was not pointed with stings of sting-rays, and their clubs or pikes, which must do more execution by their weight than their sharpness, were not more than half as heavy as the smallest I have seen in the other islands. Defensive weapons I saw none; they, however, guarded