e made with the seine,
fish in Adam Bay being very scarce.

NATIVE FAMILY.

Near Escape Cliffs I met a small family of natives, consisting of an
elderly man, his wife, and four children; by degrees, advancing alone, I
contrived to get near enough to make the woman a present of a
handkerchief, in return for which she gave me a large leaf of the cabbage
palm, that was slung across her back. I at length drew all the family
around me, the eldest child, a youth of about 15, being the most timid.
He had a small piece of wood two feet long, sticking through the
cartilage of his nose. His teeth and those of the other children were
quite perfect, but in the father and mother two of the upper front ones
were gone, as we before noticed was the case with the natives at Port
Essington, where this ceremony is performed after marriage. The hair of
these people was neither curly nor straight, but what I have before
called crisp, being of that wavy nature sometimes noticed in Europeans.

They had with them three small-sized dogs of a light brown colour, of
which they appeared very fond, and I could not induce them to part with
them.

The old man's spear was not barbed, and the womera or throwing stick of
the same long narrow shape as at Port Essington. The woman had also the
same bottle-shaped basket slung over her neck, as before remarked, and
containing white and red earths for painting their bodies.

CURIOSITY AND FEAR.

These people exhibited more curiosity than I had before noticed in the
Aborigines, as I was able to induce them to visit the whaleboat that was
on shore close by. Here, as in other places, the size of the oars first
astonished them, and next the largeness of the boat itself. The
exclamations of surprise given vent to by the old man as he gazed on the
workmanship of his civilized brethren, were amusing; suddenly a loud
shout would burst from his lips, and then a low whistle. I watched the
rapid change of countenance in this wild savage with interest; all his
motions were full of matter for observation. The mixed curiosity and
dread depicted in his dusky face, the feeling of secret alarm at this
first rencontre with a white man intruding in his native wilds, which he
must have experienced, added much to the zest of the scene. I, however,
at length almost persuaded the old man to accompany me on board; he even
put one foot in the boat for the purpose, when seeing the depth of the
interior, he recoiled with a slig