On this day ...
21 October 1769
Endeavour Voyage Maps
James Cook's Journal Ms 1, National Library of Australia
Transcript of Cook's Journal
Joseph Banks's Journal
Sydney Parkinson's Journal
Description of Poverty Bay
Index
Search
Contact us
The women were plain, and made themselves more so by painting their faces with red ocre and oil, which being generally fresh and wet upon their cheeks and foreheads, was easily transferred to the noses of those who thought fit to salute them; and that they were not wholly averse to such familiarity, the noses of several of our people strongly testified: they were, however, as great coquets as any of the most fashionable ladies in Europe, and the young ones as skittish as an unbroken filly: each of them wore a petticoat, under which there was a girdle, made of the blades of grass highly perfumed, and to the girdle was fastened a small bunch of the leaves of some fragrant plant, which served their modesty as its innermost veil. The faces of the men were not so generally painted, yet we saw one whose whole body, and even his garments, were rubbed over with dry ocre, of which he kept a piece constantly in his hand, and was every minute renewing the decoration in one part or another, where he supposed it was become deficient. In personal delicacy they were not equal to our friends at Otaheite, for the coldness of the climate did not invite them so often to bathe; but we saw among them one instance of cleanliness in which they exceeded them, and of which perhaps there is no example in any other Indian nation. Every house, or every little cluster of three or four houses, was furnished with a privy, so that the ground was every where clean. The offals of their food, and other litter, were also piled up in regular dunghills, which probably they made use of at a proper time for manure.
 |
Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Vols. II-III of the London 1773 edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, pages 313 - 314, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv23/312.html