o us of
other natives they have as anxiously wished us to believe that they had
told us lies.

Their talent for mimicry is very great. It was a favourite diversion with
the children to imitate the peculiarities in any one's gait, and they
would go through it with the happiest success.

They are susceptible of friendship, and capable of feeling sorrow; but
this latter sensation they are not in the habit of encouraging long. When
Ba-loo-der-ry, a very fine lad who died among us, was buried, I saw the
tears streaming silently down the sable cheek of his father Mau-go-ran;
but in a little time they were dried, and the old man's countenance
indicated nothing but the lapse of many years which had passed over his
head.

With attention and kind treatment, they certainly might be made a very
serviceable people. I have seen them employed in a boat as usefully as
any white person; and the settlers have found some among them, who would
go out with their stock, and carefully bring home the right numbers,
though they have not any knowledge of numeration beyond three or four.

Their acquaintance with astronomy is limited to the names of the sun and
moon, some few stars, the Magellanic clouds, and the milky way. Of the
circular form of the earth they have not the smallest idea, but imagine
that the sun returns over their heads during the night to the quarter
whence he begins his course in the morning.

As they never make provision for the morrow, except at a whale-feast,
they always eat as long as they have any thing left to eat, and when
satisfied, stretch themselves out in the sun to sleep, where they remain
until hunger or some other cause calls them again into action. I have at
times observed a great degree of indolence in their dispositions, which I
have frequently seen the men indulge at the expence of the weaker vessel
the women, who have been forced to sit in their canoe, exposed to the
fervour of the mid-day sun, hour after hour, chanting their little song,
and inviting the fish beneath them to take their bait; for without a
sufficient quantity to make a meal for their tyrants, who were lying
asleep at their ease, they would meet but a rude reception on their
landing.

APPENDIX XI--FUNERAL CEREMONIES

The first peculiarity noticeable in their funeral ceremonies is the
disposal of their dead; their young people they consign to the grave;
those who have passed the middle age are burnt. Bennillong burnt the body
of