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Terra del Fuego


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Terra del Fuego (continued)

the men, for they continualy expose those parts to the view of strangers with a carelessness which thoroughly proves them to have no regard to that kind of decency.

Their ornaments of which they are extreemly fond consist of necklaces or rather Solitaires of shells and braceletts which the women wear both on their wrists and legs, the men only on their wrists, but to compensate for the want of the other they have a kind of wreath of brown worsted which they wear over their Foreheads so that in reality they are more ornamented than the women.

They paint their faces generaly in horizontal lines just under their eyes and sometimes make the whole region of their eyes white, but these marks are so much varied that no two we saw were alike: whether as marks of distinction or mere ornaments I could not at all make out.

They seem also to paint themselves with something like a mixture of grease and soot for particular occasions, as when we went to their town there came two out to meet us who were dawb'd with black lines all manner of ways so as to form the most diabolical countenance imaginable, and these two seemd to exorcise us or at least made a loud and long harangue which did


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© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 172, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-077.html