DISCOVERY OF EASTERN AUSTRALIA 435 



The men of science were anxious to see if the natives Unlike 



of the East resembled the natives of the West, who had Sampler's 



' Indians. 



been described by Dampier, in general a " faithful relater." 

 ' They are," Dampier had written," of a very unpleasing 

 aspect, having no one graceful feature in their faces. Their 

 hair is short and curled like that of the negroes, and not 

 long and lank like the common Indians. The colour 

 of their skins is coal-black like that of the negroes of 

 Guinea." And he had mentioned that " the two fore- 

 teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all of them." Banks 

 noticed that the appearance of the Eastern natives was 

 different. They did not want front teeth'. Their hair 

 was lank, and neither woolly nor frizzled. Their outside 

 appeared the colour of wood-soot ; but, as they were 

 covered with eternal filth, the native colour of the sub- 

 terranean skin was hard to tell. Banks, with his usual 

 scientific thoroughness, spat on his finger, and tried to 

 penetrate the crust. As he worked deeper, the colour 

 altered very little, but perhaps was nearer chocolate 

 than coal-black. They had holes through their noses, 

 with " sprit-sail yards rigged across," said the sailors. 

 Still they were very much pleasanter to look at than had 

 been the inhuman creatures whom Dampier had seen on 

 the West. Cook thought their features " far from being 

 disagreeable," and their voices " soft and tunable." 



They lived, however, like Dampier's Westerners. " They The simple 

 seem," writes Cook, " to have no fixed habitation, but 

 move about from place to place, like wild beasts in search 

 of food. . . . We never saw one inch .of cultivated ground 

 in the whole country. Their houses are mean small 

 hovels, not much bigger than an oven. . . . They have not 

 the least knowledge of iron or any other metal ; their work- 

 ing tools must be of stone, bone, and shell." Their darts, 

 however, could be hurled by throwing-sticks to a distance 

 of forty or fifty yards with almost, if not quite, as good 

 an aim as an English musket. It was Cook's duty, as 

 an eighteenth-century philosopher, to add that, though 

 the natives of New Holland were apparently the most 

 wretched people on the earth, they were " in reality far 



