BAMBOO KNIFE.
While leaning out of one of the wardroom ports, and getting words from a very intelligent native whose attention I secured by giving him various little presents from time to time, I had occasion to point to a bamboo scoop* lying in the canoe in order to get its name. The man, to my surprise, immediately bit off a narrow strip from one side, as if to sharpen the edge, and taking up a piece of stick, showed me that this scoop was used as a knife. Not to be outdone I took one of our common knives and cut away vigorously at a piece of wood to show the superiority of our knives over his one; he appeared suddenly to become terrified, talked vehemently to the others, drew their attention to me, and repeated my motions of cutting the wood, after which his canoe pushed off from the ship's side. My friend refused to accept of the knife--as I afterwards found the natives had also done to other people when iron implements were offered them--nor would he pay any further attention to my attempts to effect a reconciliation.
(*Footnote. Resembling that figured in Jukes' Voyage of the Fly volume 1 page 277, but smaller.)
NATIVE HAIR-DRESSING.
The greatest peculiarity among these people is their mode of dressing the hair; it is usually shaved off the temples and occasionally a little way up the forehead, then combed out at length, and tied midway with a string, leaving one part straight, and the remainder frizzled out into a mop projecting horizontally backwards. Some also had a long pigtail hanging down behind, in one case decorated with a bunch of dogs' teeth at the end. Across the forehead they wore fillets of small shells strung together over a broad white band of some leafy substance. The septum of the nose was perforated, and some wore a long straight nose-stick of bone with black bands. All our visitors had their teeth darkened with the practice of betel chewing--we saw them use the leaf of the betel pepper, the green areca nut, and lime, the last carried in a small calabash with a spatula.
NATIVES OF REDSCAR BAY.
LEAVE NEW GUINEA.
We had been becalmed all the morning, but before noon the seabreeze set in from the South-South-East, and we got underweigh, ran past South-west Cape, and anchored in 22 fathoms mud, off a large island afterwards named in honour of Lieutenant Yule.