_Turtle-backed Island._--Primitive--Cocoa-nut trees; no gum trees--"We came one day on the first symptoms of cultivation of the ground we had ever seen among the aborigines of this part of the world. This was a little circular plot of ground, not more than four or five yards in diameter; but it had evidently been dug, though in a rude manner, and in it were set several young plantain-trees, one or two other plants, and two trailing plants, somewhat like French beans in appearance, which we afterwards found were a kind of yam. The huts on this island had the appearance of a first attempt at a house, having side walls about two feet high, and a gable-shaped roof rising four feet from the ground. They were about ten feet long and six feet wide, made principally of bamboo and thatched with grass and leaves." _Mount Ernest._--Primitive--Cocoa-nuts--Captain Blackwood "landed upon Mount Ernest (807 feet high), and found a group of huts much superior to any we ever saw in Australia, a small grove of cocoa-nuts and another of large bamboos. The natives did not show themselves till after he left the island; and though he spent a night on it he did not suspect their presence at the time. In the huts were found parcels of human bones, ornamented with red ochre, a mask or hideous face made of wood and ornamented with the feathers of some struthious bird, and one or two bundles of small wooden tubes, eight inches long and half an inch in diameter, the use of which we never could discover. The feathers so abundantly used as ornaments on their canoes and other articles by all these islanders, were at first taken by us for emu feathers, as a matter of course, and supposed to be procured from the mainland of Australia. I was afterwards, however, induced to doubt the correctness of that supposition; and on comparing them (in company with my friend Mr. George Bennett, of Sydney,) with the feathers of the emu, in the Sydney Museum of Natural History, we found them to be totally distinct from any emu feathers. They are probably, therefore, feathers of the cassowary or some similar bird, and are derived from New Guinea instead of Australia." Of all the islands of Torres Straits, this is the one nearest to Australia, whereof the population is apparently derived from New Guinea.