WHALING VOYAGE. 
821 
bold, elevated front, with face erect and cheerful, but 
still appearing as if they could be easily excited to 
quarrel. These people are of a dark-brown colour, 
approaching to black, with stout and well-proportioned 
limbs, many of them being above six feet in height. 
They had hair, which they wore in considerable quan- 
tities, all frizzled out, forming an immense mass or 
bush, coloured either with white or red powder. A 
small piece of wood, about the thickness of a crow-quill, 
was thrust completely through the whole thickness of 
the nose at its lower part, in a transverse direction, the 
aperture through which it was passed being in most of 
them much inflamed and ulcerated. Some of them had 
« 
their nostrils distended by placing small props of wood 
inside of them crosswise. They were quite large enough 
naturally, to my taste, without any artificial increase of 
the dimensions of those nasal caverns ; and, when we 
consider the pain and inconvenience which they must 
have endured from these props and crossbars, nothing 
but an idea of their personal beauty being prodigiously 
increased bv their use, could have reconciled them to 
their adoption. They were entirely naked, merely 
having their bodies coloured with various devices, but 
they were not tattooed. 
After we had nearly filled our boats with their pro- 
duce, we found the evening was fast approaching, and 
pointing to the glorious sun, which was once more dis- 
appearing below the fluid horizon, we made signs to 
them that we would return when it rose again, which 
they soon perfectly understood, and we took our depar- 
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