Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/340

312 about three inches in length, and fastened with a string, coated with a kind of mastic.

This weapon must be dangerous among a people who wear no cloaths. Their skin, constantly exposed, must be ill able to resist so sharp a piece of glass, especially in places where it has a little tension.

This volcanic glass is perhaps not very common in the Admiralty Islands; for some of those savages had spears armed with sharp pieces of wood instead of glass.

Many had the septum of the nose pierced with a hole, which contained a string, to the extremities of which were suspended dogs' teeth twice as long as human ones. One of them, wishing to part with this ornament, a chief, in cutting the string aukwardly, which was too short, with a piece of volcanic glass, wounded the native.

An order issued by the General very much interrupted this bartering trade; although the natives still had a great many things which they wished to dispose of. One of the chiefs very much amused us with his calabash of lime, the properties of which he displayed with many ostentatious airs, thinking, no doubt, thereby to enhance its price. His gestures might have been considered, as a happy imitation of those of our most dextrous mountebank doctors. We