490 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
man in the ship, was but 14 inches.” And again— 
“ The manly beauty of the young men is very remark¬ 
able ; one in particular, who had decked his hair with 
the flowers of the scarlet hibiscus, might have sat for an 
Antinous. Their features are often beautiful, although 
the nose is somewhat flatter than with us; but this, I 
believe, is done by the mothers in the children’s early 
youth as an improvement to their appearance.” This 
practice broadens, and to our eye disfigures, the nose, 
which is naturally rather long and somewhat arched, as 
shown by portraits, and can hardly differ in its normal 
state from that of good-looking Europeans. The hair is 
dark-brown or black, smooth and curly, totally unlike 
either the frizzled mop of the Papuan or the perfectly 
straight black hair of the true Malay. They have little 
beard generally, though sometimes it grows pretty freely. 
Their average stature is fully equal to that of Europeans. 
The form of their heads is broad, high, and flattened at 
the back; the latter feature may, however, be artificial. 
In character they are cheerful and joyous, fond of dancing 
and song, and a variety of amusements. Although cere¬ 
monious and stately in many of their customs, gloom and 
moroseness are contrary to their nature. They are very 
cleanly in all their habits, and have a taste for neatness 
and order such as never exists elsewhere among people in 
a barbarous state. Though without written language, 
they have an abundance of songs and traditions, handed 
down from one generation to another, as among the 
ancient bards of our own country. 
Although entirely without metals, their native manu¬ 
factures are very beautiful. They make mats of extreme 
delicacy, and bark cloth, beaten out to the thinness of 
fine paper, joined together in rolls sometimes hundreds 
of yards long, and ornamented with graceful patterns in 
