The Bark Of These Trees Seems To Be The Substance Of Which
They Make Those Little Bits Of Cloth, So Remarkable In Their Dress." -
G.F.
[6] Wafers met with Indians in the Isthmus of Darien of the colour of
a white horse.
See his Description of the Isthmus, page 134. See also
Mr de Paw's Philosophical Enquiries concerning Americans, where
several other instances of this remarkable whiteness are mentioned,
and the causes of it attempted to be explained. - This note is by
Captain Cook. The reader may not have forgotten some remarks on the
subject, in a former volume. - E.
[7] It is also worth while noticing the following circumstance, which
occurred during this excursion. "The appearance of a large beef-bone,
which some of our people began to pick towards the conclusion of their
supper, interrupted a conversation that was carried on with the
natives. They talked very loud and earnestly to each other, looked
with great surprise, and some marks of disgust, at our people, and at
last went away altogether, expressing by signs that they suspected the
strangers of eating human flesh. Our officer endeavoured to free
himself and his shipmates from this suspicion; but the want of
language was an insurmountable obstacle to his undertaking, even
supposing it possible to persuade a set of people, who had never seen
a quadruped in their lives." - G.F.
Notwithstanding this appearance of dislike to so horrid a practice, it
must not be hastily inferred, that these people are themselves free
from the vice which they condemned. On the contrary, one might rather
imagine that their so readily conjecturing the circumstance, from what
they saw, proceeded from a conviction of their own occasional
acquiescence in it; and that their present umbrage arose from
apprehension of their own danger in the hands of persons so much more
powerful than themselves. But we reserve the subject of cannibalism
for another place, where perhaps it will be shewn that those very
people are not free from this opprobrium of the savage state. The
reader is already aware, that the younger Forster is not to be too
strictly relied on as to his accounts of our species in its rude
condition, more particularly where it is possible, with some stretch
of liberality, to substitute the pleasing dreams of fancy for the
disagreeable realities of truth. - E.
SECTION IX.
A Description of the Country and its Inhabitants; their Manners,
Customs, and Arts.
I shall conclude our transactions at this place with some account of the
country and its inhabitants. They are a strong, robust, active, well-made
people, courteous and friendly, and not in the least addicted to pilfering,
which is more than can be said of any other nation in this sea. They are
nearly of the same colour as the natives of Tanna, but have better
features, more agreeable countenances, and are a much stouter race; a few
being seen who measured six feet four inches. I observed some who had thick
lips, flat noses, and full cheeks, and, in some degree, the features and
look of a negro.
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