ountry, so
far as we can judge, seems to owe its principal nourishment and support.

VISITED BY NATIVES.

January 25.

The forenoon was devoted to the examination of this excellent anchorage,
and a party was also despatched to haul the seine. On landing they were
met by a party of natives, who saluted them in a manner which strikingly
resembled the eastern mode. They had no weapon, save one kiley or
boomerang, and bowed down until they almost kissed the water.

CONDUCT OF MIAGO.

Their speech was shrill and quick, perfectly unintelligible to our friend
Miago, who seemed greatly in fear of them: they seemed astonished to find
one apparently of their own clime, complexion, and degree in company with
the white strangers, who must have seemed to them a different race of
beings; nor was their wonder at all abated when Miago threw open his
shirt, and showed them his breast curiously scarred after their
fashion--for this custom of cutting stripes upon the body, as other
savages tattoo it, by way of ornament, seems universally to prevail
throughout Australia--as a convincing evidence that he, though now the
associate of the white man, belonged to the same country as themselves.
When Miago had, in some degree, recovered from his alarm--and their want
of all weapons no doubt tended to reassure him more than anything else,
he very sagaciously addressed them in English; shaking hands and saying,
"How do you do?" and then began to imitate their various actions, and
mimic their language, and so perfectly did he succeed that one of our
party could not be persuaded but that he really understood them; though
for this suspicion I am convinced there was in truth no foundation. In
general appearance this tribe differed but little from those we had
previously seen. They wore their hair straight, and tied behind in a rude
semblance of the modern queue; their beards were long, and two or three
among them were daubed with a kind of black ochre. All of them had lost
one of the front teeth, and several one finger joint;* in this particular
they differed from the natives seen in Roebuck Bay, amongst whom the
practice of this mutilation did not prevail. They were, I think,
travelling to the southward, at the time they fell in with us, for they
had no females among the party, by whom they are usually at other times
accompanied. The circumstance of their being unarmed may seem to militate
against the supposition that they were travelling, but i