3M SOME ACCOUNT OF NEW HOLLAND CH. xm 



Naked as these people are when abroad, they are scarcely 

 at all better defended from the injuries of the weather when 

 at home ; if that name can with propriety be given to 

 their houses, as I believe they never make any stay in them, 

 but wandering like the Arabs from place to place, set them 

 up whenever they meet with a spot where sufficient supplies 

 of food are to be met with. As soon as these are exhausted 

 they remove to another, leaving the houses behind, which 

 are framed probably with less art, or rather less industry, 

 than any habitations of human beings that the world can show. 

 At Sting-ray's Bay, where they were the best, each was 

 capable of containing within it four or five people, but not 

 one of all these could extend himself Jiis whole length in 

 any direction ; he might just sit upright, but if inclined to 

 sleep, must coil himself up in some crooked position, as the 

 dimensions were in no direction enough to receive him 

 otherwise. They were built in the form of an oven, of 

 pliable rods about as thick as a man's finger, the ends of 

 > which were stuck into the ground, and the whole covered 

 with palm leaves and broad pieces of bark. The door was a 

 fairly large hole at one end, opposite to which there seemed 

 from the ashes to be a fire kept pretty constantly. To the 

 northward, where the warmth of the climate made houses less 

 necessary, they were in proportion still more slight : a house 

 there was nothing but a hollow shelter about three or four 

 feet deep, built like the former, and like them covered with 

 bark. One side of this was entirely open ; it was always the 

 side sheltered from the course of the prevailing wind, and 

 opposite to this door was always a heap of ashes, the remains 

 of a fire, probably more necessary to defend them from 

 mosquitos than cold. In these it is probable that they only 

 sought to protect their heads and the upper part of their 

 bodies from the draught of air, trusting their feet to the 

 care of the fire. So small they were that even in this 

 manner not above three or four people could possibly crowd 

 into them, but small as the trouble of erecting such houses 

 must be, they did not always do it : we saw many places in 

 the woods where they had slept with no other shelter than 



