Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/186

128 are obliged in the exercise of their profession, fishing especially, to be much exposed to the sun and air, are of a dark brown, while those of superior rank, who spend most of their time in their houses under shelter, are seldom browner (the women particularly) than that kind of brunette which many in Europe prefer to the finest red and white. Complexion, indeed, they seldom have, though some I have seen show a blush very manifestly; this is perhaps owing to the thickness of their skin, but that fault is in my opinion well compensated by their infinite smoothness, much superior to anything I have met with in Europe.

The men, as I have before said, are rather large. I have measured one 6 feet 3½ inches. The superior women are also as tall as Europeans, but the inferior sort are generally small. Their hair is almost universally black and rather coarse, this the women wear always cropped short round their ears; the men, on the other hand, wear it in many various ways, sometimes cropping it short, sometimes allowing it to grow very long, and tying it at the top of their heads or letting it hang loose on their shoulders, etc. Their beards they all wear in many different fashions, always, however, plucking out a large part of them and keeping what is left very clean and neat. Both sexes eradicate every hair from under their armpits, and they looked upon it as a great mark of uncleanliness in us that we did not do the same.

During our stay in these islands I saw some, not more than five or six, who were a total exception to all I have said above. They were whiter even than we, but of a dead colour, like that of the nose of a white horse; their eyes, hair, eyebrows, and beards were also white; they were universally short-sighted, and always looked unwholesome, the skin scurfy and scaly, and the eye often full of rheum. As no two of them had any connection with one another, I conclude that the difference of colour, etc., was totally accidental, and did not at all run in families.

So much for their persons. I shall now mention their methods of painting their bodies, or tattow as it is called in