314 SOME ACCOUNT OF NEW HOLLAND cu. xu 
Naked as these people are when abroad, they are scarcely 
at all better defended from the injuries of the weather when 
at home; if that name can with propriety be given to 
their houses, as I believe they never make any stay in them, 
but wandering like the Arabs from place to place, set them 
up whenever they meet with a spot where sufficient supplies 
of food are to be met with. As soon as these are exhausted 
they remove to another, leaving the houses behind, which 
are framed probably with less art, or rather less industry, 
than any habitations of human beings that the world can show. 
At Sting-ray’s Bay, where they were the best, each was 
capable of containing within it four or five people, but not 
one of all these could extend himself his whole length in 
any direction; he might just sit upright, but if inclined to 
sleep, must coil himself up in some crooked position, as the 
dimensions were in no direction enough to receive him 
otherwise. They were built in the form of an oven, of 
pliable rods about as thick as a man’s finger, the ends of 
which were stuck into the ground, and the whole covered 
with palm leaves and broad pieces of bark. The door was a 
fairly large hole at one end, opposite to which there seemed 
from the ashes to be a fire kept pretty constantly. To the 
northward, where the warmth of the climate made houses less 
necessary, they were in proportion still more slight: a house 
there was nothing but a hollow shelter about three or four 
feet deep, built like the former, and like them covered with 
bark. One side of this was entirely open; it was always the 
side sheltered from the course of the prevailing wind, and 
opposite to this door was always a heap of ashes, the remains 
of a fire, probably more necessary to defend them from 
mosquitos than cold. In these it is probable that they only 
sought to protect their heads and the upper part of their 
bodies from the draught of air, trusting their feet to the 
care of the fire. So small they were that even in this 
manner not above three or four people could possibly crowd 
into them, but small as the trouble of erecting such houses 
must be, they did not always do it: we saw many places in 
the woods where they had slept with no other shelter than 
