Indians were repeatedly seen upon both Bentinck’s and Sweers’ Islands; but they always avoided us, and sometimes disappeared in a manner which seemed extraordinary.  It is probable that they hid themselves in caves dug in the ground; for we discovered in one instance a large hole, containing two apartments (so to call them), in each of which a man might lie down.  Fire places under the shade of the trees, with dried grass spread around, were often met with; and these I apprehend to be their fine-weather, and the caves their foul-weather residences.  The fern or some similar root, appears to form a part of their subsistence; for there were some places in the sand and in the dry swamps, where the ground had been so dug up with pointed sticks that it resembled the work of a herd of swine.

Whether these people reside constantly upon the islands, or come over at certain seasons from the main, was uncertain; canoes, they seemed to have none, but to make their voyages upon rafts similar to those seen at Horse-shoe Island, and of which some were found on the shore in other places.  I had been taught by the Dutch accounts to expect that the inhabitants of Carpentaria were ferocious, and armed with bows and arrows as well as spears.  I found them to be timid; and so desirous to avoid intercourse with strangers, that it was by surprise alone that our sole interview, that at Horse-shoe Island, was brought about; and certainly there was then nothing ferocious in their conduct.  Of bows and arrows not the least indication was perceived, either at these islands or at Coen River; and the spears were too heavy and clumsily made, to be dangerous as offensive weapons:  in the defensive, they might have some importance.

It is worthy of remark, that the three natives seen at Horse-shoe Island had lost the two upper front teeth; and Dampier, in speaking of the inhabitants of the Northwest Coast, says, “the two front teeth of the upper jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young.”  Nothing of the kind was observed in the natives of the islands in Torres’ Strait, nor at Keppel, Hervey’s, or Glass-house Bays, on the East Coast; yet at Port Jackson, further south, it is the custom for the boys, on arriving at the age of puberty, to have one of the upper front teeth knocked out, but no more; nor are the girls subjected to the same operation.  At Twofold Bay, still further south, no such custom prevails, nor did I observe it at Port Phillip or King George’s Sound, on the South Coast; but at Van Diemen’s Land it seems to be used partially, for M. Labillardiere says (p. 320 of the London translation), “we observed some, in whom one of the middle teeth of the upper jaw was wanting, and others in whom both were gone.  We could not learn the object of this custom; but it is not general, for the greater part of the people had all their teeth.”  The rite of circumcision, which seemed to have been practised upon two of the three natives at Horse-shoe Island, and of which better proofs were found in other parts of the Gulph of Carpentaria, is, I believe, novel in the history of Terra Australis.