f all the above ages and descriptions;
they have very good teeth in general; their hair is short,
strong, and curly, and as they seem to have no method of cleaning
or combing it, it is therefore filthy and matted.
The men wear their beards, which are short and curly, like the
hair of the head. Men, women, and children go entirely naked, as
described by Captain Cook; they seem to have no fixed place of
residence, but take their rest wherever night overtakes them:
they generally shelter themselves in such cavities or hollows in
the rocks upon the sea shore, as may be capable of defending them
from the rain, and, in order to make their apartment as
comfortable as possible, they commonly make a good fire in it
before they lie down to rest; by which means, the rock all round
them is so heated as to retain its warmth like an oven for a
considerable time; and upon a little grass, which is previously
pulled and dryed, they lie down and huddle together.
And here, we see a striking instance of the particular care of
Providence for all his creatures. These people have not the most
distant idea of building any kind of place which may be capable
of sheltering them from the severity of bad weather; if they had,
probably it would first appear in their endeavours to cover their
naked bodies with some kind of cloathing, as they certainly
suffer much from the cold in winter.
Their ignorance in building, is very amply compensated by the
kindness of nature in the remarkable softness of the rocks, which
encompass the sea coast, as well as those in the interior parts
of the country: they are a soft, crumbly, sandy stone; those
parts, which are most exposed to, and receive the most severity
of the weather, are generally harder than such parts as are less
exposed; in the soft parts time makes wonderful changes; they are
constantly crumbling away underneath the harder and more solid
part, and this continual decay leaves caves of considerable
dimensions: some I have seen that would lodge forty or fifty
people, and, in a case of necessity, we should think ourselves
not badly lodged for a night. Wherever you see rocks in this
country, either on the sea-shore, or in the interior parts, as
they are all of this soft sandy kind, you are sure of finding
plenty of such caves.
In the woods, where the country is not very rocky, we
sometimes met with a piece of the bark of a tree, bent in the
middle, and set upon the ends*, with a piece set up a
|