Note 3 — CHAP. XXIV.

Being sufficiently refreshed, we sat down upon the beach, near the twenty-one gun battery, where I had an opportunity of examining the features and figure of one of their young females, as she approached us, like Venus rising out of the sea. These people being very different from all the other Indian nations that I have already described, I shall embrace the opportunity of fulfilling my promise, and giving a particular account of them.—In the first place, the skin of the young woman who was now emerging clean from the river, and divested of arnotta-paint, appeared much fairer than the copper-colour of the other Indians; neither were her limbs deformed by those strait-laced bracelets or cotton-bands so much in use with the rest; nor did her hair hang down, but was neatly plaited close round the crown of her head, and fastened in the centre with a broad silver plate3. Her only dress consisted, both during the time she bathed and after, of a small square apron made of beads, as I have mentioned before: in every other respect she was perfectly naked: nor could a finer figure be imagined—erect, vigorous, active, young, and healthy, which convinced me that when the body is exposed, as it certainly was ordained by nature, the face is but little noticed.