Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/297

] distinctly marked muscles indicated great strength. Their figure though not very agreeable, is extremely expressive. Their heads are very big; their foreheads broad, like the rest of their faces, which are very flat, especially under the nose; their chins large and prominent; their cheeks full, their noses flat, their mouths very large, and their lips very thin.

The betel, which gives a bloody tint to their large mouths, adds to the ugliness of their appearance.

Their ears are loaded with large rings made of shells, the weight of which contributed to the large size of those organs. Some had red and white streaks traced upon their bodies; and we observed one whose hair and nose were sprinkled with a red earth, which appeared to be ochre. Some had bracelets formed of the fibres of the cocoa-nut husk.

Their hair was curled, thick and bulky, like that of many papows, whom we afterwards met with.

They are in the practice of plucking the hair from every part of the body. There was but one seen, on board the Esperance, who allowed his beard to grow.

All of them had their loins girded with a cord, which went several times about the body, and seemed