308 BIMANA. 



their beards were very hard and thick : an excessive stupidity was 

 stamped upon their countenances, probably the effect of slavery. These 

 savages, whose skin is of a very deep dirty brown, or black colour, go 

 naked : they make incisions upon their arms and breasts, and wear in 

 their noses pieces of wood, nearly six inches long : their character is 

 taciturn, and their physiognomy fierce ; their motion is uncertain and 

 slow. The inhabitants of the coasts gave us some details of the Enda- 

 menes ; but as they seemed to us to be dictated by hatred, and as their 

 accounts differed, either because the sense of what they told us was 

 badly understood, or because they related to us statements which they 

 did not themselves credit, with the intention of inspiring us with fear, we 

 think it useless to make a race of men known, by false or inexact descrip- 

 tions, whose history is still enveloped in thick darkness." 



The same writer supposes that, though confined to the interior in the 

 northern districts of New Guinea, the Endamenes, or Alfourous, are the 

 sole possessors of the southern portion of the island ; and that, having 

 crossed Torres Straits, at some remote era, they have spread themselves 

 over the vast regions of Terra Australis : a theory which appears to be 

 supported by the physical characters, as well as by the customs, of 

 the Australians. The " Alfourous-Endamenes" are farther described as 

 having the skin blackish, the hair coarse and straight, the face broad, the 

 cheek-bones prominent, the beard thick and very black : their manners 

 are savage and repulsive. 



In stature, the Australians, or " Alfourous- Australien," are moderate ; 

 the limbs are generally slender, and elongated ; the face is flattened ; the 

 cheek-bones are prominent; the nose is large and depressed, with widely- 

 spread nostrils ; the lips are thick ; the mouth is of disproportionate 

 width ; the teeth are projecting ; the eyes are half closed by the upper . 

 eyelids, which are lax and heavy ; the ears are loose and large ; the hair* 

 is black, coarse, hard, and worn in rough knots, or masses, often bound 

 round with a fillet, termed cambun, or bolombine ; the beard is rough and 

 matted ; the colour of the skin is of a dirty black, and the expression ot 

 the physiognomy lowering and repulsive. Many tribes perforate the sep- 

 tum naris, and wear in the orifice a round stick ; and the custom of 

 extracting one of the upper incisor teeth is practised by the males, on 

 arriving at manhood. -j- The annexed figure (226) is characteristic of the 

 features of the Alfourou- Australien. 



* The females use much grease in dressing the hair. The bolombine is sometimes made from 

 the stringy bark of a tree, or from the tendons of the Kangaroo's tail, and daubed with pipe-clay. 



t Mr. George Bennett, in his Wanderings in New South Wales, fyc., thus describes the natives of 

 the Bugong Mountain in the Tumah country: "Both males and females were in a state of nudity, 

 wearing the Opossum skin cloaks only as a protection from the weather ; and the septum naris had 

 the usual perforation and ornament through it. Some of the females had tolerably pretty features, 

 with dark hair, short, and having a natural curl; not, however, in any respect like the frizzled hair of 

 the African Negro, or the spiral twist of that race so closely allied to them, the Papuan ; but having that 



