Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/311

] inhabitants of Diemen's land. They do not cover themselves like the former with charcoal dust, though we remarked a few amongst them who had blackened a part of their breasts with it; tracing thereon broad strokes in an oblique direction which they call poun, in their language; many of them were adorned with necklaces, like that represented in Plate XXXVII, Fig. 4; these necklaces were made of twisted threads, suspended from which they usually carried at the end of a bit of string, a small piece of bone very indifferently carved, which appeared to be a human bone. Their arms were sometimes ornamented with bracelets cut, some from shells, others of quartz, or very hard stones. (See Plate XXXVII. Fig. 5 and 6.)

These warlike people devote the greatest attention to the manufacture of their arms, which they polish perfectly well. Their clubs are of a great variety of forms, some of which are to be seen in Plate XXXVII.

I was much surprised to find that they were unacquainted with the use of bows.

Their javelins, which are commonly fifteen feet in length, are not more than two and a half inches in circumference in the middle. I admired the ingenious method they had invented to accelerate the motion of those javelins when