220 3EIEELY ISLAND AND NATIVES. 



rent delight, and a great deal of capering and 

 dancing about on the sand, some strips of a gaudy 

 handkerchief conveyed, to them by a lad decorated 

 with streamers of pandanus leaf at the elbows and 

 wrists — evidently the Adonis of the party. Some 

 of the men had formerly been off to the ship, and 

 one or two carried axes of the usual form, but 

 headed with pieces of our iron hoop, neatly ground 

 to a fine edge. A few cocoa-nuts were given us for 

 a knife or two, and we saw their mode of climbing 

 for them, which one man did with the agility of a 

 monkey, ascending first by a few notches, made 

 years ago, afterwards by clasping the trunk with 

 his arms, arching his body with the feet ag'ainst the 

 tree, and then walking up precisely in the mode of 

 the Torres Strait Islanders. Like these last people 

 too, they open the nut with a sharp stick, and use a 

 shell (a piece of mother-of-pearl oyster) for scraping 

 out the pulp. After a stay of half an hour we 

 returned to the boat leaving the natives in good 

 humour. Our search for a safe anchorage for the 

 ship was unsuccessful, so we returned on board. 



July 3rd. — After the good understanding which 

 appeared to have been established yesterday, I was 

 rather surprised at observing the suspicious manner 

 in which we were received to-day by the people on 

 Brierly Island. In two boats we went round to a 

 small sandy point on the northern side of the 

 island where seven or eight canoes were hauled up 

 on the beach, but some time elapsed before any of 



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