Before This Excursion, Some Of Us Had Been Of Opinion That These People
Were Addicted To An Unnatural Passion, Because
They had endeavoured to
entice some of our men into the woods; and, in particular, I was told, that
one
Who had the care of Mr Forster's plant bag, had been once or twice
attempted. As the carrying of bundles, &c. is the office of the women in
this country, it had occurred to me, and I was not singular in this, that
the natives might mistake him and some others for women. My conjecture was
fully verified this day. For this man, who was one of the party, and
carried the bag as usual, following me down the hill, by the words which I
understood of the conversation of the natives, and by their actions, I was
well assured that they considered him as a female; till, by some means,
they discovered their mistake, on which they cried out, "Erramange!
Erramange!" "It is a man! It is a man!" The thing was so palpable, that
every one was obliged to acknowledge, that they had before mistaken his
sex: and that, after they were undeceived, they seemed not to have the
least notion of what we had suspected. This circumstance will shew how
liable we are to form wrong conjectures of things, among people whose
language we are ignorant of. Had it not been for this discovery, I make no
doubt that these people would have been charged with this vile custom.
In the evening I took a walk with some of the gentlemen into the country on
the other side of the harbour, where we had very different treatment from
what we had met with in the morning. The people we now visited, among whom
was our friend Paowang, being better acquainted with us, shewed a readiness
to oblige us in every thing in their power. We came to the village which
had been visited on the 9th. It consisted of about twenty houses, the most
of which need no other description than comparing them to the roof of a
thatched house in England, taken off the walls and placed on the ground.
Some were open at both ends, others partly closed with reeds, and all were
covered with palm thatch. A few of them were thirty or forty feet long, and
fourteen or sixteen broad. Besides these, they have other mean hovels,
which, I conceived, were only to sleep in. Some of these stood in a
plantation, and I was given to understand, that in one of them lay a dead
corpse. They made signs that described sleep, or death; and circumstances
pointed out the latter. Curious to see all I could, I prevailed on an
elderly man to go with me to the hut, which was separated from the others
by a reed fence, built quite round it at the distance of four or five feet.
The entrance was by a space in the fence, made so low as to admit one to
step over.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 367 of 461
Words from 190502 to 191009
of 239428
