LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



pushing off from the shore, they asked us in their native 

 tongue, pointing to the sun, 'You going back again ? ' 



* The Feejees live in so warm a climate that they have 

 little need of clothing, and in fact both men and women 

 go almost naked, and the little children quite so, till they 

 are ten or eleven years old. They are a dark, reddish- 

 brown race of savages, and are rendered the more savage 

 in appearance by an enormous head of black frizzled hair. 

 They comb it out from the head, and let it grow till it 

 forms a bushy covering three or four inches thick, and 

 looks like a huge cap made of bearskin. It is often 

 dressed for the day by filling it with clay or mud, and 

 children as well as men and women may be often seen 

 with their heads thus plastered over, sometimes with 

 white lime and sometimes with a red or white clay ; after 

 working or walking awhile, the mud comes streaming 

 down with the perspiration and dries in dirty streaks 

 across their faces. Like the inhabitants of more enlight- 

 ened nations they pierce the ears to receive a jewel or 

 ornament ; but fashion with the Feejee leads him to en- 

 large the hole till it will take in a large shell an inch or 

 more in thickness, or will hold two or three cigars, or an 

 old pipe and a bundle of tobacco, for this nauseous weed 

 has already reached those shores. 



" On landing among them, they flocked around us in 

 great numbers and expressed surprise at everything they 

 saw. ' Venaka, venaka ' (good, good), was the cry on all 

 sides, as they examined our buttons, our clothes, our 

 shoes, hats, knives, pistols, etc., and especially the white- 

 ness of our skins. We were generally in such numbers 

 or so near our ship that there was little danger in going 

 freely among them, for they would have been glad of the 

 chance to have killed us. 



' You will think, my dear children, that the Feejees 

 must look quite savage enough without artificial aids, but 

 when getting ready for a fight they make themselves 

 more hideous still by painting their faces. Some of them 

 blacken it all over ; others paint it half black and half red ; 

 others, all black, except a ring of red around each eye, or 

 a few streaks of red on the forehead or face. Imagine to 

 yourselves three or four hundred half-naked savages, with 

 their black or black-and-red faces, each bearing a heavy 

 war-club or a long spear, and the whole dancing and 



134 



