Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/120

 While on a short expedition in the country with a surveying party we saw many of the natives, the Corroborys. They were of medium height. The color of their skin was a dark chocolate without any cream in it — a sort  of reddish black. Their hair was fine, black, and silky, and inclined to curl. They were more hairy than the whites. They were slender in form, and had long legs and arms. Their foreheads were narrow; their eyes deep-set, small, and black; their noses much flattened  at the upper part, between the eyes, and broad at the  nostrils. The forming of the latter feature was done by the mothers during infancy. Their features were uglier than those of the Terra del Fuegians, but they had much  more manly forms. They were very haughty and independent, having no masters or chiefs over them. They considered one man among them as good as another, as  long as he behaved himself. Their huts were more simple and exposed than those of the Terra del Fuegians. Two forked sticks were driven into the ground, and on  these was laid horizontally the limb of a tree, as a ridge-pole. The sides of the roof were composed of strips of thick bark, extending from the ridge-pole to the ground,  covered first with leaves, and then with the skins of the  kangaroo and other animals. The scanty clothing which they wore was made from the skins of animals. They lived on herbs, fowls, and the flesh of the kangaroo,  which they killed with spears, and sometimes with the  boomerang.

Their spears were about ten feet long, very slender, made of hard wood, and barbed at the end. The boomerang is a flat stick about three feet long, two inches