Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/372

314 Naked as these people are when abroad, they are scarcely at all better defended from the injuries of the weather when at home; if that name can with propriety be given to their houses, as I believe they never make any stay in them, but wandering like the Arabs from place to place, set them up whenever they meet with a spot where sufficient supplies of food are to be met with. As soon as these are exhausted they remove to another, leaving the houses behind, which are framed probably with less art, or rather less industry, than any habitations of human beings that the world can show. At Sting-ray's Bay, where they were the best, each was capable of containing within it four or five people, but not one of all these could extend himself his whole length in any direction; he might just sit upright, but if inclined to sleep, must coil himself up in some crooked position, as the dimensions were in no direction enough to receive him otherwise. They were built in the form of an oven, of pliable rods about as thick as a man's finger, the ends of which were stuck into the ground, and the whole covered with palm leaves and broad pieces of bark. The door was a fairly large hole at one end, opposite to which there seemed from the ashes to be a fire kept pretty constantly. To the northward, where the warmth of the climate made houses less necessary, they were in proportion still more slight: a house there was nothing but a hollow shelter about three or four feet deep, built like the former, and like them covered with bark. One side of this was entirely open; it was always the side sheltered from the course of the prevailing wind, and opposite to this door was always a heap of ashes, the remains of a fire, probably more necessary to defend them from mosquitos than cold. In these it is probable that they only sought to protect their heads and the upper part of their bodies from the draught of air, trusting their feet to the care of the fire. So small they were that even in this manner not above three or four people could possibly crowd into them, but small as the trouble of erecting such houses must be, they did not always do it: we saw many places in the woods where they had slept with no other shelter than