Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/61

] served by him; but no sooner did one of the women perceive their design, than she uttered horrible cries, to give notice to the other savages, who intreated them to return toward the sea.

We did not know to what to ascribe their repugnance for our viands, but they would taste none that we offered them. They would not even suffer their children to eat the sugar we gave them, being very careful to take it out of their mouths the moment they were going to taste it. Yet their confidence in us was so great, that one of the women, who was suckling a child, was not afraid to entrust it to several of us.

I imagined that these people, passing most of their nights in the open air, in a climate of which the temperature is so variable, must have been subject to violent inflammations of the eyes: yet all of them appeared to have their sight very good, one only excepted, who had a cataract.

Some of them sat on kangarou's skins, and some others had a little pillow, which they called roéré, near a quarter of a yard long, and covered with skin, on which they rested one of their elbows.

We observed with surprize, the singular posture of the women, when they sit on the ground. Though for the most part they are entirely naked, it appears to be a point of decorum with these ladies,