CHAPTER XI.
A Description of the Natives of New South Wales, and our Transactions with them.
I doubt not my readers will be as glad as I feel myself, to conclude the dull detail of the last chapter.

If they please, they may turn from the subtle intricacies of the law, to contemplate the simple, undisguised workings of nature, in her most artless colouring.
I have already said, we had been but very few days at Port Jackson, when an alteration in the behaviour of the natives was perceptible; and I wish I could add, that a longer residence in their neighbourhood had introduced a greater degree of cordiality and intermixture between the old, and new, lords of the soil, than at the day on which this publication is dated subsists.
From their easy reception of us in the beginning, many were induced to call in question the accounts which Mr.Cook had given of this people.
That celebrated navigator, we were willing believe, had somehow by his conduct offended them, which prevented the intercourse that would otherwise have taken place.

The result, however, of our repeated endeavours to induce them to come among us has been such as to confirm me in an opinion, that they either fear or despise us too much, to be anxious for a closer connection.

And I beg leave at once, to apprize the reader, that all I can here, or in any future part of this work, relate with fidelity of the natives of New South Wales, must be made up of detached observations, taken at different times, and not from a regular series of knowledge of the customs and manners of a people, with whom opportunities of communication are so scarce, as to have been seldom obtained.
In their persons, they are far from being a stout race of men, though nimble, sprightly, and vigorous.

The deficiency of one of the fore teeth of the upper jaw, mentioned by Dampier, we have seen in almost the whole of the men; but their organs of sight so far from being defective, as that author mentions those of the inhabitants of the western side of the continent to be, are remarkably quick and piercing.