The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. VI. Being the Second of the Third VoyageCook, James
History
The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. VI. Being the Second of the Third Voyage
Cook, James
Cook, James, 1728-1779 -- Travel; Explorers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Voyages around the world -- History -- 18th century
Besides the stone or rock that constitutes the mountains and shores
which sometimes contains pieces of very coarse _quartz_, we found
amongst the natives things made of a hard black _granite_, though not
remarkably compact or fine grained; a greyish whetstone, the common
oil-stone of our carpenters, in coarser and finer pieces, and some black
bits which are little inferior to the hone-stone. The natives also use
the transparent leafy _glimmer_, or Muscovy glass, a brown leafy or
martial sort, and they sometimes brought to us pieces of rock-crystal,
tolerably transparent. The first two are probably found near the spot,
as they seemed to be in considerable quantities, but the latter seems to
be brought from a greater distance, or is very scarce, for our visitors
always parted with it reluctantly. Some of the pieces were octangular,
and had the appearance of being formed into that shape by art.
The persons of the natives are in general under the common stature, but
not slender in proportion, being commonly pretty full or plump, though
not muscular. Neither doth the soft fleshiness seem ever to swell into
corpulence, and many of the older people are rather spare or lean. The
visage of most of them is round and full, and sometimes, also, broad,
with large prominent cheeks; and above these, the face is frequently
much depressed, or seems fallen in quite across between the temples, the
nose also flattening at its base, with pretty wide nostrils, and a
rounded point. The forehead rather low, the eyes small, black, and
rather languishing than sparkling, the mouth round with large round
thickish lips, the teeth tolerably equal and well set, but not
remarkably white. They have either no beards at all, which was most
commonly the case, or a small thin one upon the point of the chin, which
does not arise from any natural defect of hair on that part, but from
plucking it out more or less; for some of them, and particularly the old
men, have not only considerable beards all over the chin, but whiskers
or mustachios, both on the upper lip, and running from thence toward the
lower jaw obliquely downward.[42] Their eye-brows are also scanty and
always narrow, but the hair of the head is in great abundance, very
coarse and strong, and without a single exception, black, straight, and
lank, or hanging down over the shoulders; the neck is short; the arms
and body have no particular mark of beauty or elegance in their
formation, but are rather clumsy; and the limbs in all are very small in
proportion to the other parts, and crooked or ill made, with large feet
badly shaped and projecting ankles. This last defect seems, in a great
measure, to arise from their sitting so much on their hams or knees,
both in their canoes and houses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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