Their canoes are light and graceful, and occasionally they
present quite a picture with their gaily-dressed or half-dressed
occupants. We heard their tom-toms and banjoes last night as evening set
in, but a music much sweeter to our ears was a chorus from some _frogs_,
with notes somewhat finer than their relatives on our side of the earth.
These islanders are nothing more than marine nomads, that lead an idle,
vagabond life, intermixed with a good deal of roguery. They have a fine
_physique_, as might be supposed from their open-air mode of life, in
which they have plenty of healthful exercise without being overworked,
as Mother Nature feeds them spontaneously, and they require little more
clothing than they brought into the world with them.
In the afternoon some of the officers visited the shore, and were
hospitably received. There were from ninety to one hundred natives, men,
women, and children, visible, and there were probably as many more on
the other side of the island, as they have a S.W. monsoon village there.
They seemed to have plenty of fowls, and they are very expert fishermen.
They were gambling--such a thing as labour being out of the question.
The island seems originally to have been a solid mass of rock, the rocky
walls of the mountains peeping out in many places from the midst of the
dense forest, and gradually as time and the elements disintegrated
portions of it, plants and trees took root, until the island became what
it is now, a mass of luxuriant vegetation.
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