%76 cook's voyage to april, 



tance, or is very scarce, for our visitors always parted 

 with it reluctantly. Some of the pieces were oct- 

 angular, and had the appearance of being formed 

 into that shape by art. 



The persons of the natives are in general under 

 the common stature, but not slender in proportion, 

 being commonly pretty full or plump, though not 

 muscular. Neither doth the soft fleshiness seem ever 

 to swell into corpulence, and many of the older 

 people are rather spare or lean. The visage of most 

 of them is round and full, and sometimes, also, 

 broad, with large prominent cheeks ; and above 

 these, the face is frequently much depressed, or 

 seems fallen in quite across between the tem- 

 ples, the nose also flattening at its base, with 

 pretty wide nostrils, and a rounded point. The 

 forehead rather low, the eyes small, black, and 

 rather languishing than sparkling, the mouth round 

 with large round thickish lips, the teeth tolerably 

 equal and well set, but not remarkably white. They 

 have either no beards at all, which was most com- 

 monly the case, or a small thin one upon the point 

 of the chin, which does not arise from any natural de- 

 fect of hair on that part, but from plucking it out more 

 or less ; for some of them, and particularly the old men, 

 have not only considerable beards all over the chin, but 

 whiskers or mustachios, both on the upper lip, and 

 running from thence toward the lower jaw obliquely 

 downward.* Their eye-brows are also scanty and 



* One of the most curious singularities observable in the natural 

 history of the human species, is the supposed defect in the habit 

 and temperature of the bodies of the American Indians, exemplified 

 in their having no beards, while they are furnished with a profusion 

 of hair on their heads. M. de Paw, the ingenious author of Re- 

 cherches sur les Americains, Dr. Robertson, in his History of Ame- 

 rica, and, in general, the writers for whose authority we ought 

 to have the highest deference, adopt this as an indisputable matter 

 of fact. May we not be permitted to request those who espouse 

 their sentiments, to reconsider the question, when we can produce 

 Captain Cook's evidence on the opposite side, at least so far as re- 

 lates to the American tribe, whom he had intercourse with at 



