DESCRIPTION OF THE NATIVES. 
265 
a red powder, good foreheads, eyebrows slightly 
contracted, broad flat noses, with wide nostrils, 
generally adorned with a pair of hoar’s tusks, which 
give them a very fierce appearance ; thick lips, 
retreating chin, and sometimes a little beard and 
whiskers. The ornaments worn by them were very 
numerous, besides which they seemed to be very fond 
of decorating their person with flowers and strong- 
scented plants. In what might be considered full 
dress (?), with their face and body painted (the most 
common fashion was a broad streak down the fore- 
head and a circle round each eye, with daubs of 
paint round the mouth, and some over the entire 
body, rendering them inexpressibly hideous in our 
sight), they were often decorated with belts and 
breastplates made of the bones of the cassowary and 
dog, together with long streamers of pandanus leaf. 
They wear bushy wigs of frizzled hair, dyed in 
various colours ; bracelets and armlets of woven 
grass, and necklaces of shell, black seed, and dog’s 
teeth. 
Nearly every one was armed with bows and 
arrows. The bow is made of a tough, black, close- 
grained wood, the string being of bamboo. Their 
arrows consist of a head of cocoa-nut wood or bam- 
boo, tipped into a light reed, and secured by a neat 
cane-plaiting. They are variously barbed on the 
edges, and some are so constructed as to break off 
in the wound and remain there. 
