8 cook's VOYAGE TO AUG. 



per-coloured people, with straight black hair, which 

 some of them wore tied in a bunch on the crown of 

 the head, and others, flowing about the shoulders. 

 Their faces were somewhat round and full, but the 

 features, upon the whole, rather flat ; and their 

 countenances seemed to express some degree of na- 

 tural ferocity. They had no covering but a piece of 

 narrow stuff wrapped about the waist, and made to 

 pass between the thighs, to cover the adjoining parts; 

 but some of those whom we saw upon the beach, 

 where about a hundred persons had assembled, were 

 entirely clothed with a kind of white garment. We 

 could observe, that some of our visitors, in the canoes, 

 wore pearl shells, hung about the neck, as an orna- 

 ment. One of them kept blowing a large conch-shell, 

 to which a reed, near two feet long, was fixed ; at 

 first, with a continued tone of the same kind ; but he, 

 afterward, converted it into a kind of musical instru- 

 ment, perpetually repeating two or three notes, with 

 the same strength. What the blowing the conch 

 portended, I cannot say ; but I never found it the 

 messenger of peace. 



Their canoes appeared to be about thirty feet long, 

 and two feet above the surface of the water as they 

 floated. The forepart projected a little, and had a 

 notch cut across, as if intended to represent the 

 mouth of some animal. The afterpart rose with a 

 gentle curve to the height of two or three feet, 

 turning gradually smaller, and, as well as the upper 

 part of the sides, was carved all over. The rest 

 of the sides, which were perpendicular, were curi- 

 ously incrusted with flat, white shells, disposed nearly 

 in concentric semicircles, with the curve upward. 

 One of the canoes carried seven, and the other eight, 

 men ; and they were managed with small paddles, 

 whose blades were nearly round. Each of them had 

 a pretty long outrigger ; and they sometimes paddled 

 with the two opposite sides together so close, that they 

 seemed to be one boat with two outriggers ; the rowers 



