Page:Narrative of a survey of the intertropical and western coasts of Australia, Volume 2.djvu/117

 96 SURVRY OF ?HR INTERTROPICAL la!. curled, like that of the negroes; and no long and Aug.--a lank like the common Indians. The colour of their skins, both of their faces and the rest .of their body, is coal.black, like that of the negroes of Guinea*. "They have no sort of clothes, but a piece of the rind of a tree tied like a girdle about their waists, and a handful of long grass, or three or four small green boughs full of' leaves, thrust under their girdle, to cover their nakedness. "They have no houses, but lie in the open air without any covering; the earth being their bed, and the heaven their canopy. Whether they co- habit one man to one woman, or promiscuously, I know not; but they do live in comp!es, twenty or thirty men, women, and children toge- ther. Their only food is a small sort of fish, which they get by making wears of stone across little coves or branches of the sea: every tide bringing. in the small fish, and there leaving them for a prey to these people, who constantly were not deprived of their front teeth, sad wore their beards long; they also differed from the above description ia lavin .' their hair long and curly. Dampier may have been deceived in this respect, and from the ue that they take of their hair, by twist- ing it up into a substitute for thread, they had probably cut it off clce, which would give them the appearance of laving woolly hair like the ncgvo.
 * Te natives of Hanover Bay, with whom we eomhmnkated,

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