Account of Peron's Peninsula. 251!; 



the place and return to the vessel, by rushing down to the shore 

 with loud shouts. The bay was from that circumstance named 

 Attack Bay. 



M. Arago was however rather more successful in procuring a 

 short intercourse with a party of fifteen of the natives, who di- 

 vided themselves into three bands ; one of them had a small dog. 

 As usual, their conduct displayed extreme fear, suspicion, trea- 

 chery, and a disposition to hostility. " They are of a middling 

 stature ; their skin is as black as ebony ; their eyes are small 

 and lively ; they have a broad forehead, flat nose, large mouth, 

 thick lips, and white teeth ; their chest is tolerably broad ; their 

 extremities are slender ; their motions quick and numerous ; their 

 weapons not very dangerous ; their agility is surprising ; their 

 language noisy. Some of them are tatooed with red ; and the wo- 

 man we saw, had her forehead tatooed, and was, like the men, 

 perfectly naked." 



In one of M. Arago's excursions, he found ten or a dozen ruined 

 huts on the north shore, near Point Shoals. These huts are form- 

 ed of a few branches, crossing each other, covered with brushwood 

 and clay ; they are six feet high, four or five broad, and three and 

 a half above the ground. The entrance is almost always on the side 

 facing the wind that most commonly blows. The natives make 

 their fires in the centre, and sometimes around the hut. On some 

 high points of land they erect also a kind of observatory, formed of 

 a few trunks of trees, on which they post themselves to observe the 

 distant country. 



The articles obtained from these Indians by the French, consist- 

 ed of a club, a very dirty fan, (probably a leaf of the fan palm 

 from the interior of the continent,) some cassowarys' feathers, two 

 bladders painted red, filled with very fine down, and an assagay of 

 hard wood, six feet long, but not very sharp. " After our barter, 

 we pretended to follow them, in order to try their courage, when 

 they disappeared with astonishing swiftness." 



In another account of Freycinet's expedition,* the description of 

 Peron's Peninsula presents rather more encouraging features, if 

 we carefuUy select all the circumstances, and particularly if we 

 consider some of the articles in the possession of the Indians, with 

 reference to the question, " Whence were they procured ?" If we 

 collate such incidents as bear a favourable aspect, and unite all 

 these together, it will appear to any person who has resided in a 

 hot climate, that the whole account of this spot has been drawn up 

 under the great disadvantages of a hurried stay, apprehensions of 

 being surprized or attacked by the natives, a constitution not equal 

 to encountering the heat of a nearly tropical sun, and lastly, a 

 want of suflicient provisions. 



" Nautical and Geographical Account of the Voyage of the Uranie," by L. 

 Freycinet. 



VOL. II. 2 K 



