The native races of the Pacific Ocean / William Henry Flower.

  • Flower, William Henry, 1831-1899.
Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The native races of the Pacific Ocean / William Henry Flower. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    world. The Hodmadods [Hottentots] of Monomatapa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these; who have no houses and skin garments, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth, ostrich eggs, &c., as the Hodmadods have. And setting aside their humane shape, they differ but little from brutes. They are tall, strait-bodied, and thin, with small, long limbs. They have great heads, round foreheads, and great brows. They have great bottle noses, pretty full lips, and wide moutbs. The two fore-teeth of their upper-jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young; whether they draw them out I know not. Neither have they any beards. They are long-vizaged, and of a very unpleasing aspect, having no one graceful feature in their faces. Their hair is black, short, and curl’d, like that of the Negroes; and not long and lank, like the common Indians. The colour of their skins, both of their faces and the rest of their body, is black, like that of the Negroes of Guinea. They have no sort of cloaths, but a piece of the rind of a tree ty’d like a girdle about their waists, and a handful of long grass, or three or four small green boughs full of leaves, thrust under their girdle to cover their nakedness. They have no houses, but lie in the open air, without any covering; the earth being their bed, and the heavens their canopy. Their only food is a small sort of fish, which they get by making wares of stone across little coves, or branches of the sea. In other places they seek for cockles, mussels, periwincles,” &c. He describes their weapons as wooden swords and lances. “The sword is a piece of wood shaped somewhat like a cutlass,” probably a boomerang. It is satisfactory to note that the relations of Dampier and his companions with the natives, both on this and his second visit to Australia at Shark’s Bay, eleven years later, were perfectly amicable, or at all events unattended by any serious disagreement or casualty on either side, a sudden and vigorous beating of the drum being sufficient to scare them away on one occasion when they had become troublesome and even threatening. The next visit of an Englishman to Australia was one which led to far more memorable consequences. It was that of Captain Cook, who, on his first voyage round the world, after sailing westward from New Zealand, reached the coast of “ New South Wales,” as lie named it, near Cape Howe, on the 19th of April, 1770, and sailing north- wards, explored the whole east coast to Cape York in Torres Straits. His first sight of the natives, on April 27th, is described at page 489, and his first landing, on the following day, at page 492 of the great navigator’s deeply interesting narrative. Bead by the light of sub- sequent events, the gallant though unsuccessful defence of their native land by two naked savages against a boat’s crew of forty armed men must excite our sympathy. Certainly no more critical event has ever occurred in the history of any nation, nor combat ever fought attended with such momentous consequences, to one at least of the races engaged, as that which took place in Botany Bay on April 28th, B 2