In this excursion some interviews with the natives took place.  When the party first landed in Broken Bay several women came down to the beach with the men.  One of these, a young woman, was very talkative and remarkably cheerful.  This was a singular instance, for in general they are observed on this coast to be much less cheerful than the men, and apparently under great awe and subjection.  They certainly are not treated with much tenderness, and it is thought that they are employed chiefly in the canoes, in which women have frequently been seen with very young children at the breast.  The lively young lady, when she joined the party the second day in her canoe, stood up and gave a song which was far from unpleasing.  The men very readily gave their assistance to the English in making a fire, and behaved in the most friendly manner.  In a bay where Governor Phillip and his company landed to draw the seine, a number of the natives again came to them.  It was now first observed by the Governor that the women in general had lost two joints from the little finger of the left hand.  As these appeared to be all married women, he at first conjectured this privation to be a part of the marriage ceremony; but going afterwards into a hut where were several women and children, he saw a girl of five or six years of age whose left hand was thus mutilated; and at the same time an old woman, and another who appeared to have had children, on both of whom all the fingers were perfect.  Several instances were afterwards observed of women with child, and of others that were evidently wives, who had not lost the two joints, and of children from whom they had been cut.  Whatever be the occasion of this mutilation, it is performed on females only; and considering the imperfection of their instruments, must be a very painful operation.  Nothing has been seen in the possession of these people that is at all calculated for performing such an amputation, except a shell fixed to a short stick, and used generally for pointing their spears, or for separating the oysters from the rocks.  More fingers than one are never cut; and in every instance it is the same finger that has suffered.*

[* In Patterson’s Travels in Africa, lately published, we are told, that he met with a tribe of Hottentots near Orange River, all of whom had lost the first joint of the little finger:  the reason they gave for cutting it off was, that it was a cure for a particular sickness to which they were subject when young.  Fourth Journey, p. 117.  It would be a curious coincidence of customs should it be discovered that the natives of New Holland do it for any similar reason.]