Page:Journals of Several Expeditions Made in Western Australia.djvu/222

 courtly seeming, that I did not hesitate to advance to meet them alone and unarmed. They were on the whole smaller of stature than the men I had been accustomed to see, and wore no skins. The countenances of two of them were certainly ugly and brutal enough, but the third had a sprightly air and good-humoured expression, accompanied with that revolting laugh which is so general with these savages; his hair matted with peculiar taste into strings, resembling spun-yarn, and bound up close, displayed a head of true Caucasian proportion, with a facial angle less acute than is often observable in the European.

They expressed considerable surprise at the facility with which we procured a spark from the firelock; and, upon bur making signs to that effect, soon blew it into a blaze. I afterwards shot them two small birds, and gave them some of our kangaroo meat, which they ate, refusing biscuit and vegetables. I obtained some words of their language; it seemed much the same as that used at Augusta. As is the custom there, they designated one another, as well as ourselves, (in compliment I have always thought), with the appellation youngaree and mamiungo; this struck me as a considerable evidence of connection existing between them and the savages of Cape Leeuwin. The words:

I enter thus into these particulars, because I infer that a judicious treatment of the natives at