98 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS FAMILY. 



could scarce credit my senses. Had I not been an eye- 

 witness of this immense magazine of curiosities, I could not 

 have thought it possible for him to have made a twentieth 

 part of the collection. I have excited your curiosity ; I wish 

 to gratify it ; but the field is so vast and my knowledge so 

 superficial that I dare not attempt particulars. I will en- 

 deavour to give you a general catalogue of the furniture of 

 three large rooms. First the Armoury; this room contains all 

 the warlike instruments, mechanical instruments and utensils 

 of every kind, made use of by the Indians in the South Seas 

 from Terra del Fuego to the Indian Ocean — such as bows and 

 arrows, darts, spears of various sorts and lengths, some 

 pointed with fish, some with human bones, pointed very 

 finely and very sharp, scull-crackers of various forms and 

 sizes, from 1 to 9 or 10 feet long, stone hatchets, chisels 

 made of human bones, canoes, paddles, &c. It may be ob- 

 served here that the Indians in the South Seas were entire 

 strangers to the use of iron before our countrymen and 

 Monsieur Bougainville arrived amongst them ; of course these 

 instruments of all sorts are made of wood, stone, and some few 

 of bone. They are equally strangers to the other metals; nor 

 did our adventurers find the natives of this part of the globe 

 possessed of any one species of wealth which could tempt the 

 polite Europeans to cut their throats and rob them. The 

 second room contains the different habits and ornaments of 

 the several Indian nations they discovered, together with the 

 raw materials of which they are manufactured. All the 

 garments of the Otaheite Indians and the adjacent islands are 

 made of the inner bark of the Jforas pajjyrifera * and of the 

 bread tree Chitodon altilelf; this cloth, if it may be so called, is 

 very light and elegant and has much the appearance of 

 writing paper, but is more soft and pliant; it seems excellently 

 adapted to these climates. Indeed most of these tropical 

 islands, if we can credit our friend's description of them, are 

 terrestrial Paradises. The New-Zealanders, who live in much 

 higher southern latitudes, are clad in very different manner. 

 In the winter they wear a kind of mats made of a particular 

 * \_Broussonetia papyri/era. — T.B.] f [Artocarjms incisa. — T.B.] 



