attributed to them. Naked human beings, when in a lean condition, are forlorn looking creatures; but many of these people have become plump, and are partially clothed, and these circumstances have removed much of what was forbidding to a civilized eve.
The Blacks make symmetrical cuttings on their bodies and limbs, for ornament. They keep the cuts open by fining them with grease, until the flesh becomes elevated. Rows of these marks, resembling necklaces around the neck, and similar ones on the shoulders, representing epaulets, are frequent. Rings representing eyes are occasionally seen on the body, producing a rude similitude of a face. They also wear necklaces formed of Kangaroo-sinews rolled in red ochre, and others of small spiral shells. They likewise wear the bones of deceased relatives around their necks, perhaps more as tokens of affection than for ornament; and these are also used as charms. They are commonly leg or jaw bones, wrapped with strings rolled in grease and ochre, the ends only protruding; but there is a couple here who lost their only child in infancy, and its skull is generally to be seen suspended on the breast either of its father or its mother. A man who had a head-ache to-day, had three leg bones fixed on his head, in the form of a triangle, for a charm. The shells for necklaces are of a brilliant, pearly blue: they are perforated by means of the eye-teeth, and are strung on a kangaroo-sinnew; they are then exposed to the action of pyroligneous acid, in the smoke of brushwood covered up with grass; and in this smoke they are turned and rubbed till the external coat comes off, after which, they are polished with oil obtained from the penguin or the mutton-bird.
When any of these people fall sick, in their native state, so as to be unable to accompany the others in their daily removals, they are furnished with a supply of such food as the party happens to have, and a bundle of the leaves of Mesembryanthemum equilaterale— a plant known in the Colony by the name of Pig-faces—which the natives use as a purgative; and they are left to perish, unless they recover in time to follow the others. This is done as a matter of
