If an idea of the civilization of a people can be drawn from their dwellings, these islanders were on the lowest rung of the social ladder, for their huts were the most miserable Carteret had ever seen. The commander profited by his stay in this place, by once more overhauling the _Swallow_, and attending to the leak, which the carpenters doctored as well as they could. The sheathing was greatly worn, and the keel quite gnawed away by worms; they coated it with pitch and warm tar mixed together. On the 7th of September, Carteret accomplished the ridiculous ceremony of taking possession of the country in the name of George III., he then despatched one of his boats upon a reconnoitring expedition, which returned with a quantity of cocoa and palm-cabbages, most precious provision for the sick on board. In spite of the fact that the monsoon would soon blow from the east for a long time, Carteret, alive to the dilapidated condition of his ship, determined to start for Batavia, where he hoped to make up his crew, and to repair the _Swallow_. Upon the 9th September, therefore, he left Carteret harbour, the best which he had met with since leaving the Straits of Magellan. He soon penetrated to a gulf to which Dampier had given the name of St. George Bay, and was not long in reconnoitring for a strait which separated New Britain and New Ireland. This passage he found and named St. George. He describes it in his narrative with a care which should certainly have earned for him the thanks of all his contemporary navigators. He then followed the coast of New Ireland to its southern extremity. Near a little island, which he named Sandwich, Carteret had some dealings with the natives. "These natives," he says "are black, and have woolly hair like negroes, but they have not flat noses or large lips. We imagine them to be of the same race as the inhabitants of Egmont Island. Like them they are entirely naked, if we except some ornaments of shells which they attach to their arms and legs. At the same time, they have adopted a fashion, without which our fashionable men and women are not supposed to be perfectly dressed. They powder their hair or rather the wool on their heads white, from which it follows that the fashion of wearing powder is probably of greater antiquity and of more extended fashion than we would have generally supposed. They are armed with spears and large sticks in the shape of clubs, but we perceived neither bows nor arrows." At the south-western extremity of New Ireland Carteret found another land, to which he gave the name of New Hanover, and shortly afterwards the group of the Duke of Portland. Although all this portion of the narrative of his voyage, in countries unknown before his time, abounds in precious details, Carteret, a far more able and zealous navigator than his predecessors Byron and Wallis, makes excuses for not having collected more facts.