84 LAZINESS — MUSIC. 



These people are in the extremest degree indolent, 

 and are only induced to do even the slightest job or 

 errand, by promising them a meal upon its perform- 

 ance. If the employer good iiaturedly bestows the 

 recompense when they are partly through, or the 

 black fellow has had anything to eat previously, all 

 efforts to induce him to return to the work are futile 

 — words and blows being equally useless. On the 

 appearance of whaleships in the ba}^, they resort to 

 the town, and every member of said ships on going 

 ashore is importuned for hard bread and tobacco, 

 or an old jack-knife ; and if the donor gives to all 

 who ask him, he soon finds his stock of edibles and 

 patience entirely exhausted. 



There are no musical instruments among them ; 

 their vocal music is monotonous, and sounds harshl}'' 

 to the ear. At certain seasons of the year they meet 

 for the purpose of having a "corroborie" as they 

 call it, to which every member wears his best bouka ; 

 and when assembled they vie with each other in 

 grotesque grimaces and contortions, both of form and 

 feature. 



These people are protected by the laws equally 

 with the whites in this section. Some few hundred 

 miles to the northward, at a locality known as Port 

 Gregory, it is but a word and a blow ; the blow, which 

 is generally fatal, coming first. In the latter neighbor- 

 hood, depredations committed on the settlers are the 

 causes of their harsh treatment. Some few of them, 

 when young, have been taken, educated and clothed 

 in the European fashion, but in vain ; they always 

 prefer life in the bush, with their own people, to 

 all the advantages of civilization, and only return to 



