These Pins, Which Are Round,
Perhaps Have The Very Shape Of The Tool They Wanted To Make Of The Nails.
I
did not find that a hatchet was quite so valuable as a large spike.
Small
nails were of little or no value; and beads, looking-glasses, &c. they did
not admire.
The women of this country, and likewise those of Tanna, are, so far as I
could judge, far more chaste than those of the more eastern islands. I
never heard that one of our people obtained the least favour from any one
of them. I have been told that the ladies here would frequently divert
themselves by going a little aside with our gentlemen, as if they meant to
be kind to them, and then would run away laughing at them. Whether this was
chastity or coquetry, I shall not pretend to determine; nor is it material,
since the consequences were the same.[4]
[1] Mr G.F. says their dress was very disfiguring, and gave them a
thick squat shape. He describes it much like Captain Cook. According
to him, these women's features, though coarse, expressed great good-
nature; they had high foreheads, broad flat noses, rather small eyes,
and very prominent cheek-bones. His reflections on the degraded state
in which these women live, as subservient entirely to the arbitrary
will and necessary purposes of their husbands, have not so much
originality as force, but possess, however, enough of both to deserve
a place here. "They commonly kept at a distance from the men, and
seemed fearful of offending them by a look or gesture; they were the
only persons in the family who had any employment, and several of them
brought bundles of sticks and fuel on their backs.
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