P A P U A N I S L A N D S. 203 



The men go naked, excepting a fmall wrapper round their waiils, 

 made of the fibres of the coco. The women ufe a covering, in 

 general of the qq2x{q Surat bqftas^ tucked up behind, fo as to 

 leave their bodies and thighs expofed to view. The children 

 have no fort of cloathing. 



On an ifle in Lat 3° 44', Schouten obferved that the women Womest. 

 v,'ere more hideous than the men ; their face refembled that of a 

 monkey ; their breafts hung down to their middle ; their fto- 

 machs enormoufly large, and their limbs moft difproportionally 

 {lender ; one fquinted ; a fecond had an arm monftroufly fwelled ; 

 a third, a leg ; in fhort, there was not one but had fome defecfl 

 that indicated an tinwholefome climate. Such is the account 

 given in * Les Navigations anx Terres aujiraks. 



Off the north- weft part oiSalwatty'is the long ifle of Patanta^ Patanta. 

 divided from the former by a narrow but long paffage, called 

 P///'s ftreights; Mr. DalryjJtple gives views of both of the iflands. 

 The land is high on each fide, but that of Patanta remarkably 

 {0 ; the mountains are double and treble, and rife above each 

 other into moft exalted fummits, ending in points, or in rounded 

 forms, and quite cloathed with fine woods. 



Dampier, in 1699, failed between the north fide of Patanta and 

 the adjacent ifland, through a ftreight feen in the maps imder the 

 name of the new PaJJage ; Dampier miftook the ifle of Patanta 

 for the extreme north-w^eft part of the Papuas land, or New 

 Guinea, and pafied under cape Monkaitej the moft wefterly point 

 oi Patanta, which he fuppofes to have been the cape Mabo of the 

 X)utcb. Immediately afterwards he fell in with fome fmall iflands, 



* Vol. i. p. 400. 



D d a which 



