Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/236

194 We were surrounded by canoes, the natives in which came on board our ship, and sold us several articles, such as are delineated in Plates XXXVII and XXXVIII. Some of them had a few cocoa-nuts and sugar-canes, which they would not part with by any means, though we offered a great price for them.

These savages were all naked, except that they wrapped their privities in pieces of coarse stuff, made of bark, or in large leaves of trees. Their hair is woolly; and their skin is nearly of as deep a black as that of the inhabitants of Diemen's Cape, whom they very much resemble in the general cast of their countenance. Several of them had their heads bound round with a little net, the meshes of which were large. We observed with surprise, a great many, who, desirous, no doubt, of having the appearance of long hair, had fastened to their own locks two or three tresses, made with the leaves of some plants of the grass kind, and covered with the hair of the vampire bat, which hung down to the middle of their backs.

Most of these islanders, armed with spears and clubs, carried at their waist a little bag full of stones, cut into an oval shape, which they throw with slings. (See Plates XXXV and XXXVIII. Fig. 16, 17, and 18.) The lower lobe of their ears, perforated with a very large hole, hung down