Page:Life and Adventures of William Buckley.djvu/80

Rh strikingly handsome certainly, but many of them would be good-looking, did they not make such horrid frights of themselves by plastering their hair and daubing their faces and bodies all over with pipe-clay and ochre. Their hair is not curly like the African, but straight, looking terribly unsentimental. In fact, every hair of the head appears to be deranged, or out of temper with its owner; and well it may be, for it gets frightfully cut and hacked about, sometimes by shells, and flints, and such like; besides being made the abode of certain living tormentors, which it would be unparliamentary to mention, or describe more particularly. They are not at all nice about their food; all kinds of beasts, and fish, and fowl, reptile, and creeping thing—although when alive poisonous—being acceptable. It is quantity, not quality with them.

They have no notion of a Supreme Being, although they have of an after life, as in my case; and they do not offer up any kind of prayer, even to the sun or moon, as is customary with most other uncivilized people. They have a notion, that the world is supported by props, which are in the charge of a man who lives at the farthest end of the earth. They were dreadfully alarmed on one occasion when I was with them, by news passed from tribe to tribe, that unless they could send him a supply of tomahawks for cutting some more props with, and some more rope to tie them with, the earth would go by the run, and all hands would be smothered. Fearful of this, they began to think, and enquire, and calculate, where the highest