Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By the Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During the Years 1846-1850. — Volume 1: Including Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, Etc. to Which Is Added the Account of Mr. E.B. Kennedy's Expedition for the Exploration of the Cape York Peninsula. By John Macgillivray, F.R.G.S. Naturalist to the Expedition.MacGillivray, John
History
Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By the Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During the Years 1846-1850. — Volume 1: Including Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, Etc. to Which Is Added the Account of Mr. E.B. Kennedy's Expedition for the Exploration of the Cape York Peninsula. By John Macgillivray, F.R.G.S. Naturalist to the Expedition.
MacGillivray, John
Kennedy, Edmund Besley Court, 1818-1848; Natural history -- Oceania; Oceania -- Description and travel; Rattlesnake (Ship); Stanley, Owen
We obtained three clubs here--the only ones seen--one, closely resembling
the stone-headed club of Darnley Island, consists of a wooden shaft, four
feet long, sharp pointed at one end and at the other passing through a
hole in the centre of a sharp-edged circular disk of quartz, shaped like
a quoit, four inches in diameter; the second is twenty-seven inches in
length, cut out of a heavy piece of wood, leaving a slender handle and
cylindrical head, three and a half inches long, studded with knobs; the
remaining one, a less formidable weapon than the others, is flat on both
sides, with a serrated edge, and measures twenty-two inches in length and
three in width.
ORNAMENTS.
The ornaments worn on this part of the coast are in general so precisely
similar to those of the Louisiade, already described, that a brief
allusion to them is sufficient. In both places we saw the same
nose-sticks, combs stuck in the hair, flat circular earrings, woven and
shell armlets, round ornaments made of melon shell, necklaces of dog's
teeth and black seeds, and white cowries strung round the legs, arms, and
neck. I observed here none of the human jaw bones worn as bracelets so
frequently met with in the Louisiade, nor did painting the body appear to
be carried to the same extent, although the mode of doing so was the
same. Here too we sometimes saw the hair collected and twisted behind
into a single or double queue, and procured a neatly constructed bushy
wig of frizzled hair. A girdle of split rattan wound about a dozen times
round the waist is in common use here, but I do not recollect having seen
it in the Louisiade.
MANUFACTURES.
Among other articles of native manufacture I may mention large baked
earthen pots* used in cooking, also very neatly made round flat-bottomed
baskets in sets of four, partially fitting into each other, with a woven
belt to suspend them from the shoulders by--in these various small
articles are carried, among them the spatula and calabash, with lime to
be used in betel chewing--and a netted bag, a foot and a half in width
and one in depth. Their rope is beautifully made of the long tough
stringy bark of a tree, strongly twisted and laid up in three strands,
and for finer lines and twine a kind of flax, resembling the New Zealand,
but still more the Manila sort, is used here. The finest sample of the
prepared material which I saw measured eleven feet in length, and
consisted of a bundle of rather fine white fibres. Although very much
coarser than our hemp, it is of nearly uniform size, and possesses
considerable strength, but breaks easily when knotted. We saw it in
considerable quantity, but had no means of ascertaining the plant from
which it is derived, probably, however, a banana of some kind. We
occasionally saw pieces of a white soft papery cloth, apparently similar
to the tapa of Polynesia, and like it made of the inner bark of some
small tree, but it did not appear to be applied to much use.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By the Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During the Years 1846-1850. — Volume 1: Including Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago, Etc. to Which Is Added the Account of Mr. E.B. Kennedy's Expedition for the Exploration of the Cape York Peninsula. By John Macgillivray, F.R.G.S. Naturalist to the Expedition. — John Shaqi
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