The inhabitants of Maouna are probably the worst of these tribes; those we saw were at least five feet and a half in height, slender, their limbs of a moderate size, and strikingly muscular; I should have thought their faces handsome, had they not been disfigured by an expression of wildness and cruelty; their colour is dark brown; some let their long, straight, black hair hang down unornamented over neck, face, and shoulders; others wore it bound up, or frizzed and crisped by burning, and entangled like a cap round the head: these caps are coloured yellow, and make a striking contrast with the heads which remain black. Some, again, coloured their hair red, and curled it over their shoulders like a full-bottomed wig. A great deal of time must be required for this mode of dressing, a proof that vanity may exist even among cannibals. The glass beads they obtained from us they immediately hung over their neck and ears, but had previously no ornaments on either. Most of them were quite naked; only a few had aprons made of the leaves of some kind of palm unknown to us, which from their various colours and red points resemble feathers. Since the time of La Pérouse, the fashion in tattooing appears to have very much altered: he found the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands so tattooed over the whole body, as to have the appearance of being clothed;--now most of them are not tattooed at all; and those few who are, not with various drawings as formerly, but merely stained blue from the hip to the knee, as though they had on short breeches. In the canoes we saw a few women who were all very ugly: these disagreeable creatures gave us to understand that we should by no means find them cruel--a complaisance which did not render them the less disgusting. La Pérouse here describes some attractive females: these were as brown as the men, and as little dressed; their hair was cut short off, with the exception of two bunches stained red, which hung over their faces. Scarcely one of these savages was without some remarkable scar: one of them attracted our attention by a deep cut across the belly. We contrived to ask him how he got this cicatrice; and he pointed to his lance, from which it may be inferred that they are not unaccustomed to war, either with their neighbours or each other, and that they are possessed of skilful surgeons. No one of this people seemed to exercise any authority over the others. Either no chief accompanied the party who came to us, or the term does not signify much power or distinction.