her about her husband and family.  She answered me by repeating a name which I have now forgotten, and told me she had no children.  I was seized with a strong propensity to learn whether the attractions of Gooreedeeana were sufficiently powerful to secure her from the brutal violence with which the women are treated, and as I found my question either ill understood or reluctantly answered, I proceeded to examine her head, the part on which the husband’s vengeance generally alights.  With grief I found it covered by contusions and mangled by scars.  The poor creature, grown by this time more confident from perceiving that I pitied her, pointed out a wound just above her left knee which she told me was received from a spear, thrown at her by a man who had lately dragged her by force from her home to gratify his lust.  I afterwards observed that this wound had caused a slight lameness and that she limped in walking.  I could only compassionate her wrongs and sympathize in her misfortunes.  To alleviate her present sense of them, when she took her leave I gave her, however, all the bread and salt pork which my little stock afforded.

After this I never saw her but once, when I happened to be near the harbour’s mouth in a boat, with captain Ball.  We met her in a canoe with several more of her sex.  She was painted for a ball, with broad stripes of white earth, from head to foot, so that she no longer looked like the same Gooreedeeana.  We offered her several presents, all of which she readily accepted; but finding our eagerness and solicitude to inspect her, she managed her canoe with such address as to elude our too near approach, and acted the coquet to admiration.

To return from this digression to my subject, I have only farther to observe that the estimation of female beauty among the natives (the men at least) is in this country the same as in most others.  Were a New Hollander to portray his mistress, he would draw her the ‘Venus aux belles fesses’.  Whenever Baneelon described to us his favourite fair, he always painted her in this, and another particular, as eminently luxuriant.

Unsatisfied, however, with natural beauty (like the people of all other countries) they strive by adscititious embellishments to heighten attraction, and often with as little success.  Hence the naked savage of New South Wales pierces the septum of his nose, through which he runs a stick or a bone, and scarifies his body, the charms of which increase in proportion to the number and magnitude of seams by which it is distinguished.  The operation is performed by making two longitudinal incisions with a sharpened shell, and afterwards pinching up with the nails the intermediate space of skin and flesh, which thereby becomes considerably elevated and forms a prominence as thick as a man’s finger.  No doubt but pain must be severely felt until the wound be healed.  But the love of ornament defies weaker considerations, and no English beau can bear more stoutly the extraction of his teeth to make room for a fresh set from a chimney sweeper, or a fair one suffer her tender ears to be perforated, with more heroism than the grisly nymphs on the banks of Port Jackson, submit their sable shoulders to the remorseless lancet.