a fire were still
remaining. Furniture they had none; a little grass, which lay round the
inside of the hovel, served both for chairs and beds; and of all the
utensils which necessity and ingenuity have concurred to produce among
other savage nations, they saw only a basket to carry in the hand, a
satchel to hang at the back, and the bladder of some beast to hold
water, which the natives drink through a hole that is made near the top
for that purpose.

The inhabitants of this town were a small tribe, not more than fifty in
number; of both sexes and of every age. Their colour resembles that of
the rust of iron mixed with oil, and they have long black hair: The men
are large, but clumsily built; their stature is from five feet eight to
five feet ten; the women are much less, few of them being more than five
feet high. Their whole apparel consists of the skin of a guanicoe, or
seal, which is thrown over their shoulders, exactly in the state in
which it came from the animal's back; a piece of the same skin, which is
drawn over their feet, and gathered about the ancles like a purse, and a
small flap, which is worn by the women as a succedaneum for a fig-leaf.
The men wear their cloak open, the women tie it about their waist with a
thong. But although they are content to be naked, they are very
ambitious to be fine. Their faces were painted in various forms: The
region of the eye was in general white, and the rest of the face adorned
with horizontal streaks of red and black; yet scarcely any two were
exactly alike. This decoration seems to be more profuse and elaborate
upon particular occasions, for the two gentlemen who introduced Mr Banks
and the doctor into the town, were almost covered with streaks of black
in all directions, so as to make a very striking appearance. Both men
and women wore bracelets of such beads as they could make themselves of
small shells or bones; the women both upon their wrists and ancles, the
men upon their wrists only; but to compensate for the want of bracelets
on their legs, they wore a kind of fillet of brown worsted round their
heads. They seemed to set a particular value upon any thing that was
red, and preferred beads even to a knife or a hatchet.

Their language in general is guttural, and they express some of their
words by a sound exactly like that which we make to clear the throat
when any thing happens to obstruct it; yet they have words that would be
deemed soft in the better languag