rments, were rubbed over with dry ochre, of which he kept a piece
constantly in his hand, and was every minute renewing the decoration in
one part or another, where he supposed it was become deficient.[56] In
personal delicacy they were not equal to our friends at Otaheite, for
the coldness of the climate did not invite them so often to bathe; but
we saw among them one instance of cleanliness in which they exceeded
them, and of which perhaps there is no example in any other Indian
nation. Every house, or every little cluster of three or four houses,
was furnished with a privy, so that the ground was every where clean.
The offals of their food, and other litter, were also piled up in
regular dunghills, which probably they made use of at a proper time for
manure.

[Footnote 55: It is elsewhere said of these women, that, contrary to the
custom of the sex in general, they affected dress rather less than the
men. As to their modesty, let one fact related in the same place, be
allowed its legal influence.--Their innermost veil, as our author will
have it, was always bound fast round them, except when they went into
the water to catch lobsters, and then great care was taken that they
should not be seen by the other sex. "Some of us happening one day to
land upon a small island in Tolaga Bay, we surprised several of them at
this employment; and the chaste Diana, with her nymphs, could not have
discovered more confusion and distress at the sight of Actaeon, than
these women expressed on our approach. Some of them hid themselves among
the rocks, and the rest crouched down in the sea till they had made
themselves a girdle and apron of such weeds as they could find, and when
they came out, even with this veil, we could perceive that their modesty
suffered much pain by our presence!" One fact of this kind speaks
volumes. The reader may glance over them at his leisure.--E.]

[Footnote 56: It is elsewhere remarked, that the bodies of both sexes
are marked with the black stains called Amoco, like the tattowing of the
Otaheitans, but that the women are not so lavish in the decoration as
the men, and that whereas at Otaheite the breech is the choice spot for
the display of their beautifying ingenuity, in New Zealand, on the
contrary, it is almost entirely neglected as unworthy of embellishment.
So much for the capricious partiality of dame Fashion.--E.]

In this decent article of civil oeconomy they were beforehand with one
of the most