Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/346

288 some of the natives came alongside of our vessel from the very place to which the others had made their escape. They shewed themselves very fraudulent in their dealings with us, bargaining at any price for the commodities which we had to barter with them, and as soon as they had got them in their possession, refusing to give us any thing in return. One of them, however, consented to give up to us a flute and a necklace, which are represented in Plate XXXVIII. Fig. 26 and 27.

I observed one of the natives who wore, suspended from his neck by a thin cord, a part of a human bone, cut from about the middle of the cubitus. Whether this might be a trophy of some victory gained over an enemy, and those natives belong to the class of the cannibals, I cannot tell.

Many of them had their faces smeared over with the powder of charcoal.

They generally cover their natural parts with large leaves of vacoua, passing between their thighs, and fastened to the girdle before and behind by a very tight ligature.

They had with them some pretty large fishing nets, to the lower end of which they had fastened various sorts of shells; some of these shells they carried in small cylindrical baskets, furnished in