The hair is almost universally black, and rather coarse; the men have
beards, which they wear in many fashions, always, however, plucking out
great part of them, and keeping the rest perfectly clean and neat. Both
sexes also eradicate every hair from under their arms, and accused us of
great uncleanness for not doing the same. In their motions there is at
once vigour and ease; their walk is graceful, their deportment liberal,
and their behaviour to strangers and to each other affable and
courteous. In their dispositions also, they seemed to be brave, open,
and candid, without either suspicion or treachery, cruelty, or revenge;
so that we placed the same confidence in them as in our best friends,
many of us, particularly Mr Banks, sleeping frequently in their houses
in the woods, without a companion, and consequently wholly in their
power. They were, however, all thieves; and when that is allowed, they
need not much fear a competition with the people of any other nation
upon earth. During our stay in this island we saw about five or six
persons like one that was met by Mr Banks and Dr Solander on the 24th of
April, in their walk to the eastward, whose skins were of a dead white,
like the nose of a white horse; with white hair, beard, brows, and
eyelashes; red, tender eyes; a short sight, and scurfy skins, covered
with a kind of white down; but we found that no two of these belonged to
the same family, and therefore concluded, that they were not a species,
but unhappy individuals, rendered anomalous by disease.[4]

[Footnote 4: In the opinion here expressed the Editor has already
acquiesced. He would remark by the bye, that although two or more
persons had been of the same family, no sufficient argument could have
been adduced, as to the peculiar affection depending on circumstances
adequate to constitute a species; for it is very clear that hereditary
diseases do not necessarily imply essential distinctions, and there
seems no reason to alter the laws of logic in favour of the