Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/369

1770 their hair was generally matted, and filthy enough. In all of them, indeed, it was very thin, and seemed as if seldom disturbed by the combing even of their fingers, much less to have any oil or grease put into it. Nor did the custom of oiling their bodies, so common among most uncivilised nations, seem to have the least footing here.

On their bodies we observed very few marks of cutaneous disorders, such as scurf, scars of sores, etc. Their spare thin bodies indicate a temperance in eating, the consequence either of necessity or inclination, equally productive of health, particularly in this respect. On the fleshy parts of their arms and thighs, and some of their sides, were large scars in regular lines, which by their breadth and the convexity with which they had healed, showed plainly that they had been made by deep cuts of some blunt instrument, possibly a shell or the edge of a broken stone. These, as far as we could understand the signs they made use of, were the marks of their lamentations for the deceased, in honour of whose memory, or to show the excess of their grief, they had in this manner wept in blood.

For food they seemed to depend very much, though not entirely, upon the sea. Fish of all kinds, turtle, and even crabs, they strike with their lances very dexterously. These are generally bearded with broad beards, and their points smeared over with a kind of hard resin, which makes them pierce a hard body far more easily than they would without it. In the southern parts these fish-spears had four prongs, and besides the resin were pointed with the sharp bone of a fish. To the northward their spears had only one point, yet both, I believe, struck fish with equal dexterity. For the northern ones I can witness, who several times saw them through a glass throw a spear from ten to twenty yards, and generally succeed. To the southward again the quantity of fish bones we saw near their fires proved them to be no indifferent artists.

In striking turtle they use a peg of wood well bearded, and about a foot long; this fastens into the socket of a staff of light wood as thick as a man's wrist, and eight or nine