of shells hanging round the neck, so as to reach cross the breast.  But though these people wear no clothes, their bodies have a covering besides the dirt, for they paint them both white and red:  The red is commonly laid on in broad patches upon the shoulders and breast; and the white in stripes, some narrow, and some broad:  The narrow were drawn over the limbs, and the broad over the body, not without some degree of taste.  The white was also laid on in small patches upon the face, and drawn in a circle round each eye.  The red seemed to be ochre, but what the white was we could not discover; it was close-grained, saponaceous to the touch, and almost as heavy as white lead; possibly it might be a kind of Steatites, but to our great regret we could not procure a bit of it to examine.  They have holes in their ears, but we never saw any thing worn in them.  Upon such ornaments as they had, they set so great a value, that they would never part with the least article for any thing we could offer; which was the more extraordinary as our beads and ribbons were ornaments of the same kind, but of a more regular form and more showy materials.  They had indeed no idea of traffic, nor could we communicate any to them:  They received the things that we gave them; but never appeared to understand our signs when we required a return.  The same indifference which prevented them from buying what we had, prevented them also from attempting to steal:  If they had coveted more, they would have been less honest; for when we refused to give them a turtle, they were enraged, and attempted to take it by force, and we had nothing else upon which they seemed to set the least value; for, as I have observed before, many of the things that we had given them, we found left negligently about in the woods, like the playthings of children, which please only while they are new.  Upon their bodies we saw no marks of disease or sores, but large scars in irregular lines, which appeared to be the remains of wounds which they had inflicted upon themselves with some blunt instrument, and which we understood by signs to have been memorials of grief for the dead.[92]

[Footnote 91:  Other people, we know, have a fancy for such ornaments.  According to Captain Carver’s account of some of the North American Indians, “it is a common custom among them to bore their noses, and wear in them pendants of different sorts.”  And more instances might be mentioned.  But we shall have occasion hereafter to speak of some remarkable modes in which the love of distinction and ornament manifests itself The very same principle leads human nature to embellish itself from the “crown of the head to the sole of the foot.”  One’s own dear self is so lovely as to become every sort of ornament that ingenuity can contrive!—­E.]