For Had Not Providence Thus Singularly Provided For Us, Our
Christmas Cheer Must Have Been Salt Beef And Pork.
I now learnt that a number of the natives, in nine canoes, had been
alongside the ship, and some on board.
Little address was required to
persuade them to either; for they seemed to be well enough acquainted with
Europeans, and had, amongst them, some of their knives.
The next morning, the 25th, they made us another visit. I found them to be
of the same nation I had formerly seen in Success Bay, and the same which
M. de Bougainville distinguishes by the name of Pecheras; a word which
these had, on every occasion, in their mouths. They are a little, ugly,
half-starved, beardless race. I saw not a tall person amongst them. They
are almost naked; their clothing was a seal-skin; some had two or three
sewed together, so as to make a cloak which reached to the knees; but the
most of them had only one skin, hardly large enough to cover their
shoulders, and all their lower parts were quite naked. The women, I was
told, cover their nakedness with the flap of a seal-skin, but in other
respects are clothed like the men. They, as well as the children, remained
in the canoes. I saw two young children at the breast entirely naked; thus
they are inured from their infancy to cold and hardships. They had with
them bows and arrows, and darts, or rather harpoons, made of bone, and
fitted to a staff.
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