property and frequently the weapons of her husband.  In wet weather she attends to all the outside work, whilst her lord and master is snugly seated at the fire.  If there is a scarcity of food she has to endure the pangs of hunger, often, perhaps, in addition to ill-treatment or abuse.  No wonder, then, that the females, and especially the younger ones, (for it is then they are exposed to the greatest hardships,) are not so fully or so roundly developed in person as the men.  Yet under all these disadvantages this deficiency does not always exist.  Occasionally, though rarely, I have met with females in the bloom of youth, whose well-proportioned limbs and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for the sculptor’s chisel.  In personal appearance the females are, except in early youth, very far inferior to the men.  When young, however, they are not uninteresting.  The jet-black eyes, shaded by their long, dark lashes, and the delicate and scarcely-formed features of incipient womanhood give a soft and pleasing expression to a countenance that might often be called good-looking—­occasionally even pretty.

The colour of the skin, both in the male and female, is generally black, or very darkly tinged.  The hair is either straight or curly, but never approaching to the woolliness of the negro.  It is usually worn short by both sexes, and is variously ornamented at different periods of life.  Sometimes it is smeared with red ochre and grease; at other times adorned with tufts of feathers, the tail of the native dog, kangaroo teeth, and bandages or nets of different kinds.

[Note 57:  The same fondness for red paint, ornaments of skins, tufts of feathers, etc., is noticed by Catlin as prevalent among the American Indians, and by Dieffenbach as existing among the New Zealanders.]

When the head of the native is washed clean, and purified from the odour of the filthy pigment with which it is bedaubed, the crop of hair is very abundant, and the appearance of it beautiful, being a silken, glossy, and curly black.  Great pains are, however, used to destroy or mar this striking ornament of nature.

Without the slightest pride of appearance, so far as neatness or cleanliness is concerned, the natives are yet very vain of their own rude decorations, which are all worn for effect.  A few feathers or teeth, a belt or band, a necklace made of the hollow stem of some plant, with a few coarse daubs of red or white paint, and a smearing of grease, complete the toilette of the boudoir or the ball-room.  Like the scenery of a panorama, they are then seen to most advantage at a distance; for if approached too closely, they forcibly remind us of the truth of the expression of the poet, that “nature unadorned is adorned the most.”