* * * * * The natives of New Holland are nearly black, and but little more comely than their neighbors of New Guinea. They go without clothing, and rub themselves with fish oil, as a defence against musquitoes. They daub their hair with yellow gum, in order to fasten ornaments of feathers, fish-bones, and the tails of dogs. Both sexes have the back and arms deeply scarred by an operation performed with pieces of broken shell. Scarcely any woman has the two lower joints of the little finger; it is not known whether this sacrifice is made in mourning for relatives, or for some other reason. Before a girl is given to her husband, her two front teeth are knocked out. The _lover_ then throws a kangaroo skin over her shoulders, spits in her face several times, marks her with painted stripes of different colors, orders her to march to his hut with his provision bag, and if she does not go fast enough to please him, he gives her a few kicks by the way. These savages generally steal wives from some tribe with whom they are at enmity. As soon as they observe a girl without any protector near, they rush upon her, stupefy her with blows of a club, and drag her through the woods with the utmost violence. Her tribe retaliate merely by committing a similar outrage. There are no wedding ceremonies. These wretched women spend much of their time in fishing. They chew muscles and cockles, and drop them in the water for bait. Their lines are made of fibres of bark, and their hooks of mother-of-pearl oyster shells, rubbed on stones till they assume the desired shape. They commonly beguile the time by singing; but they never dance, though the men spend a great deal of their time in that amusement. A woman will often be out with two or three children, in a miserable boat, on the very edge of a rolling surf, that would frighten even an experienced mariner. If they have an infant, it lies across the mother’s lap, without danger of falling; for while employed in fishing, she sits in the bottom of the shallow boat, with her knees up to her neck, and between the knees and the body her babe lies securely. When the New Hollanders are displeased with their wives, they spear them or knock them in the head. Neither men nor women appeared to have any sense of modesty; but when they found that white people, who visited the island, thought it indecent to go without clothing, the women grew more reserved, and seemed desirous of conforming to their ideas of propriety. * * * * *