Page 116 |
Joseph Banks's Descriptions of Places |
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South Sea Islands (continued)
After their meals and in the heat of the day they often sleep, middle ag'd people especialy, the better sort of whoom seem to spend most of their time in eating or sleeping. The young boys and girls are uncommonly lively and active and the old people generaly more so than the middle ag'd ones, which perhaps is owing to the excessive venery which the heat of the climate and their dissolute manners tempt them to. Diversions they have but few: shooting with the bow is the cheif one I have seen at Otahite which is confind almost intirely to the cheifs; the[y] shoot for distance only with arrows unfledgd, kneeling upon one knee and dropping the bow from their hands at the instant of the arrows parting from it. I measurd a shot that Tubourai Tamite made, 274 yards, yet he complaind that as the bow and arrows were bad he could not shoot so far as he ought to have done. At Ulhietea bows were less common, but the people amusd themselves by throwing a kind of Javelin 8 or 9 feet long at a mark
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 361, February 2004 Published by kind permission of the Library To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-116.html |