Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/367

1770 rubbing, but altered the colour very little, which as nearly as might be resembled chocolate. The beards of several were bushy and thick; their hair, which as well as their beards was black, they wore close cropped round their ears. In some it was as lank as an European's, in others a little crisped, as is common in the South Sea Islands, but in none of them at all resembling the wool of the negroes. They had also all their fore teeth, in which two points they differ chiefly from those seen by Dampier, supposing him not to be mistaken. As for colour they would undoubtedly be called black by any one not used to consider attentively the colours of different nations. I myself should never have thought of such distinctions, had I not seen the effect of sun and wind upon the natives of the South Sea Islands, where many of the better sort of people, who keep themselves close at home, are nearly as white as Europeans; while the poorer sort, obliged in their business of fishing, etc., to expose their naked bodies to all the inclemencies of the climate, are in some cases but little lighter than the New Hollanders. They were all to a man lean and clean-limbed, and seemed very light and active. Their countenances were not without some expression, though I cannot charge them with much, their voices in general shrill and effeminate.

Of clothes they had not the least part, but were naked as ever our general father was before his fall, whether from idleness or want of invention is difficult to say. In the article of ornaments, however, useless as they are, neither has the one hindered them from contriving, nor the other from making them. Of these the chief, and that on which they seem to set the greatest value, is a bone 5 or 6 inches in length, and as thick as a man's finger, which they thrust into a hole bored through that part which divides the nostrils, so that it sticks across the face, making in the eyes of Europeans a most ludicrous appearance, though no doubt they esteem even this as an addition to their beauty, which they purchase by hourly inconvenience; for when this bone was in its place, or, as our seamen termed it, when their