men and
fourteen women. Thus the females were most numerous, and the rising
generation nearly one-third more than the adults. They were generally
healthy; one only suffered from cutaneous disease, one from a defect of
vision, and several from slight wounds. It will be told, that a sad
reverse was afterwards their fate. The French, supposing they subsisted
on fish, expected to find leprosy, and concluded, not that other food
was procured, but that the doctors were mistaken. The women and girls
were the fishers: they plunged amidst sea weed, and raised the shell
fish from rocks by the spatula. They killed the cray fish before
landing. They could endure the water twice as long as Europeans. In the
intervals of diving they roasted their spoil, and warmed themselves
between two fires; sometimes feeding their children, or themselves. Thus
they continued alternately fishing and cooking, until all were
satisfied.

The men seemed indolent; nothing could persuade them to dive: they
sauntered about, with the right hand passed behind, and holding the left
fore-arm in its grasp. As the elders moved with gravity on the beach,
the girls romped and raced with the seamen--repelling, without
resenting, their rudeness. They were sprightly and voluble, and chatted
on without intermission. On one occasion they were missed, when, turning
to a tree, they were seen perched naked in the branches, about nine feet
from the ground: an interesting group, remarks the naturalist.

In the incidents of their social life, he saw their character. The
children cried! their mothers soothed them with those maternal caresses,
which art has not improved. They held them to be decorated by the
French, and placed them in their arms. A father corrected a little boy
for the ancient diversion of throwing stones at another, and the culprit
wept! A lad concealed a basket from a seaman, to amuse by his perplexity
and its dexterous replacement! The clothes given by the French they hung
on the bushes, but they valued the tin ware, the axes and saws. The
liberality of their visitors induced them to take more than was given;
but they seemed unconscious of offence, and whatever was required they
restored without reluctance. A girl, refusing the French a skin they
desired to possess, retreated to the woods: her friends were distressed
at her ill-nature. She, at last, complied. A pair of trousers were given
in exchange; she stood between two Frenchmen, leaning on the should