They were all furnished, as has been before mentioned, with a cloak of kangaroo-skin, which is always taken off and spread under them when they lie down. Their hair was dressed in different ways; sometimes it was clotted with red pigment and seal oil, clubbed up behind, and bound round with a fillet of opossum-fur, spun into a long string, in which parrot-feathers, escalop shells, and other ornaments being fixed in different fanciful ways, gave the wearer a warlike appearance.
Their faces and sometimes their whole bodies were daubed over with a mixture of seal oil and red pigment that caused a most disgusting effluvia; but the only colouring matter that our friend Jack used, after his acquaintance with us, was the carpenter's chalk, which he thought particularly ornamental.
Bracelets of dog-tails or kangaroo-skin were commonly worn and one had several escalop shells hanging about him, the noise of which, as they jingled together, he probably thought musical.
The noodle-bul or belt in which they carry their hammer and knife is manufactured from the fur of the opossum spun into a small yarn like worsted; it is tightly bound at least three or four hundred times round the stomach; very few however possessed this ornament; and it is not improbable that the natives who had their hair clubbed, those that wore belts, and the one who was ornamented with shells, held some particular offices in the tribe, which it would be difficult for strangers to discover.
During our communication with these people the following vocabulary of their language was obtained, of which some of the words are compared with those recorded by Captain Flinders: these last are inserted in the third column.
