(*Footnote. The highest part of the island, measured up to the tops of the trees, is 479 feet.)
(**Footnote. These are all common to Polynesia, the Indian Archipelago, and tropical Australia.)
The men we saw today were dark copper coloured, with the exception of the spokesman, whose skin was of a light-brownish yellow hue. The hair in nearly all was frizzled out into a mop, in some instances of prodigious size; the light-coloured man, however, had his head closely shaved.* The physiognomy varied much; some had a savage, even ferocious aspect. The nose was narrower and more prominent, the mouth smaller, the lips thinner, the eyes more distant, the eyebrows less overhanging, the forehead higher, but not broader, than in the Australian, with whom I naturally compared them as the only dark savage race which I had seen much of. They used the betel, or something like it, judging from the effect in discolouring the teeth and giving a bloody appearance to the saliva; each man carried his chewing materials in a small basket, the lime, in fine powder, being contained in a neat calabash with a stopper, and a carved piece of tortoise-shell like a paper-cutter was used to convey it to the mouth.
(*Footnote. This allowed us to observe its contour, which was remarkable. The forehead was narrow and receding, appearing as if artificially flattened, thereby giving great prominence and width to the hinder part of the skull. Altogether this man appeared so different from the rest, that for some time he was supposed to belong to a different class of people, but I afterwards often observed the same configuration of head combined with dark coloured skin and diminutive stature.)
LIME CALABASH AND SPATULA..
None had the artificial prominent scars on the body peculiar to the Australians, or wanted any of the front teeth, but the septum of the nose was perforated to admit an ornament of polished shell, pointed and slightly turned up at each end. The lobe of the ear was slit, the hole being either kept distended by a large plug of rolled-up leaf, apparently of the banana, or hung with thin circular earrings made of the ground down end of a cone-shell (Conus millepunctatus) one and a half inches in diameter, with a central hole and a slit leading to the edge. A piece of cloth-like substance, the dried leaf of the Pandanus or some palm was used by all as a breech cloth--it passes between the legs and is secured in front and behind to a narrow waist-band.
FIND NATIVES APPARENTLY FRIENDLY.
June 17th.