New Zealand
Index
Search
Contact us
hung to them by strings many very different thing[s], often chissels or bodkins made of a kind of green talk which they value much, the nails and teeth also of their deceasd relations, dogs teeth, and in short every thing they could get which was either valuable or ornamental. Besides these the Women wore sometimes Bracelets and anclets made of the Bones of Birds, shells, &c. and the men often had the figure of a distorted man made of the beforementiond green talk, or the tooth of a whale cut slauntwise, so as something to resemble a tongue, and furnishd with two eyes; these they wore about their necks and seemd to Value almost above every thing else. I saw one instance also of a very extrordinary ornament, which was a feather stuck through the bridge of the nose and projecting on each side of it over the cheeks; but this I only mention as a singular thing, having met with it only once among the many people I have seen, and never observd in any other even the marks of a hole which might occasionaly serve for such a purpose.
Their houses are certainly the most inartificialy made of any thing among them, scarce equal to
 |
Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) 186, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-216.html