1770 DESCRIPTION OF NATIVES 309 
rubbing, but altered the colour very little, which as nearly 
as might be resembled chocolate. The beards of several 
were bushy and thick; their hair, which as well as their 
beards was black, they wore close cropped round their ears. 
In some it was as lank as an European’s, in others a little 
crisped, as is common in the South Sea Islands, but in none 
of them at all resembling the wool of the negroes. They 
had also all their fore teeth, in which two points they differ 
chiefly from those seen by Dampier, supposing him not to 
be mistaken. As for colour they would undoubtedly be 
called black by any one not used to consider attentively 
the colours of different nations. I myself should never 
have thought of such distinctions, had I not seen the 
effect of sun and wind upon the natives of the South Sea 
Islands, where many of the better sort of people, who keep 
themselves close at home, are nearly as white as Europeans ; 
while the poorer sort, obliged in their business of fishing, 
etc., to expose their naked bodies to all the inclemencies of 
the climate, are in some cases but little lighter than the 
New Hollanders. They were all to a man lean and clean- 
limbed, and seemed very light and active. Their counte- 
nances were not without some expression, though I cannot 
charge them with much, their voices in general shrill and 
effeminate. 
Of clothes they had not the least part, but were naked 
as ever our general father was before his fall, whether from 
idleness or want of invention is difficult to say. In the 
article of ornaments, however, useless as they are, neither 
has the one hindered them from contriving, nor the other 
from making them. Of these the chief, and that on which 
they seem to set the greatest value, is a bone 5 or 6 inches 
in length, and as thick as a man’s finger, which they thrust 
into a hole bored through that part which divides the nostrils, 
so that it sticks across the face, making in the eyes of 
Europeans a most ludicrous appearance, though no doubt 
they esteem even this as an addition to their beauty, which 
they purchase by hourly inconvenience ; for when this bone 
was in its place, or, as our seamen termed it, when their 
