CoLENSO. — Manibus Parkinsonibus sacrum. 125 



" The natives behaved very civil to us ; they are, in general, lean and tall 

 yet well-shaped, have faces Hke Europeans, and, in general, the aquiline 

 nose, with dark-coloured eyes, black hair which is tied up on the crown of 

 the head, and beards of a middling length. * * Their cloth is white and 

 as glossy as silk, worked by hands, and wrought as even as if it had been 

 done in a loom, and is chiefly worn by the men though it is made by the 

 women, who also carry burdens and do all the drudgery. Many of the 

 women that we saw had very good features, and not the savage countenance 

 one might expect. The men have theu' hah- tied up, but the women's hangs 

 down, nor do they wear feathers in it like the men, but adorn it with leaves. 

 They seem to be proud of their sex, and expect you should give them 

 everything they desu'e because they are women, but they take great care of 

 themselves, and are exceedingly modest, in this respect being very different 

 from the women we saw in the islands. 



" The men have a particular taste for carving ; their boats, paddles, 

 boards to put on their houses, tops of walking-sticks, and even their boats' 

 valens are carved in a variety of flourishes turnings and windings that are 

 unbroken ; but then; favourite figure seems to be a volute or spiral which 

 they vary many ways — single, double, and triple — and with as much truth 

 as if done from mathematical draughts ; yet the only instrument we have 

 seen are a chisel and an axe, both made of stone. Their fancy, indeed, is 

 very wild and extravagant, and I have seen no imitations of nature in any 

 of their performances, unless the head and the heart-shaped tongue hanging 

 out of the mouth of it may be called natural. 



"We saw many beautiful parrots and bu-ds of various kinds — one in 

 particular that had a note very much hke our blackbird, but we found no 

 ground fowl or domestic poultry. Of quadrupeds we saw no other than 

 dogs, which were like those on the island of Otaheite, and of them but a 

 few. * * * From the view which we had of the coast, and the obser- 

 vations made, we might judge that the country is well-situated, naturally 

 fertile, and capable of great improvement by cultivation, especially as the 

 climate is distinguishably mild and favourable. We had clear and fan- 

 weather all the time we were on the coast, excepting one day, and though 

 the weather was hot, yet it seemed, by what we observed, that a sea-breeze 

 constantly set in about eleven o'clock in the forenoon which moderated it. 



" On the 30th, having obtahied a sufficient quantity of wood and water, 

 we left the bay, and, sailing along the coast, about noon came up with a 

 point of land before an island; this point we called East Cape, and the 

 island East Island, from which the land altered its direction and tended 

 away to the W. We saw several villages which seemed to have been fenced 

 in by art, and some parcels of ground cultivated. We passed a bay which 



