gaging herself from her companions, made signs for us to stop and sit down, crying out loudly to us, mèdi, mèdi (sit down, sit down). She seemed also to ask us to lay down our arms, the view of which alarmed her. These preliminary conditions having been complied with, the women squatted upon their heels, and from that moment abandoned themselves without reserve to the vivacity of their character, speaking all together, questioning us all at once, making, in a word, a thousand gestures, a thousand contortions as singular as varied. M. Bellefin (doctor) began to sing, accompanying himself with very lively and animated gestures. The women kept silence, observing with much attention the gestures of M. Bellefin, as if by them to interpret his singing. Hardly had one couplet been completed, when some of them applauded with loud cries, others laughed to the echo, whilst the young girls, more timid without doubt, kept silence, evidencing nevertheless, by their movements and by the expression of their physiognomy, their surprise and their satisfaction.
"All the women, with the exception of kangaroo skins which some of them carried upon their shoulders, were perfectly naked; but, without appearing to think anything of their nudity, they so varied their attitudes and their postures, that it would be difficult to describe the bizarre and the picturesque effects presented to us by that meeting. Their skin, black and disgusting with the fat of seals; their hair, short, crisp, black and dirty, reddened in some with the dust of ochre; their figures, all bedaubed with charcoal; their forms, generally thin and faded; their breasts, long and pendant—in a word, all the details of their physical constitution were repulsive. We must always exempt from this general tableau two or three young girls of from fifteen to sixteen years, in whom we distinguished forms agreeable enough, contours sufficiently graceful, and in whom the breast was firm and well placed, although the nipple was a little too large and too long. These young girls had also something in the expression of their features the most ingenuous, the most affectionate, and the most gentle, as if the better qualities of the soul could exist even in the midst of the savage hordes of the human species, the more particular gift of youth, of grace, and of beauty.
"Among the more aged females, some had a gross and ignoble
