ng
upright in them.

Fierce as the savages looked, they were most of them remarkably fine
men, tall and athletic. The women, however, except a few who appeared
to be very young, were most unattractive. Their features were
strongly-marked, and their dress coarse and disgusting. It consisted of
stripes of palm-leaves, worn tightly round the body, and reaching to the
knees, and dirty in the extreme. Their hair, frizzled-out, was tied in
a huge bunch at the back of the head. We saw them, while they were
talking and looking at us, forking it out with large wooden forks,
having four or five prongs: indeed, an ordinary comb would have been of
little service in such a mass of cranial vegetation. The women wore
ear-rings and necklaces arranged in a variety of ways. Some of them had
two necklaces, made of white beads or kangaroo teeth, which looked well
on their dark glossy skins. The ear-rings were composed of thick silver
or copper wire, in hoops, the ends crossing each other. Some of them
had the ends of their necklaces attached to their ear-rings, and then
looped up to the chignon behind, which had a very elegant appearance, if
anything could look elegant on such unprepossessing dames.

The men had a far greater number of ornaments than the women, most of
them composed of the teeth of small animals. They had finger-rings as
well as necklaces and ear-rings, and also bracelets. Some, too, wore
bands round the arm, just beneath the shoulder, with bunches of
bright-coloured feathers or hair attached to them. Others, also, wore
anklets and bands, made of shell or brass-wire, below the knee. All the
chiefs, and those who wished to be exquisites, carried a huge forked
comb, which they continually employed in passing through their hair,
much as I have seen people with large whiskers keep pulling at them when
they had nothing better to do.

We only hoped that our captors had formed a better opinion of us than we
had of them. They appeared undecided what to do with us. At last,
however, the chief, whom we called Frizzlepate, made us a sign to enter
one of the houses, and pointed to a little box-like room, into which we
could just manage to creep. The partition walls of the house were
formed of a sort of thatch, and the only articles of furniture we saw
within were rude wooden plates and basins, with one or two metal
cooking-vessels apparently, and a number of baskets and mats. Their
weapons were spears, bows, and cl