The persons of the natives are in general under the common stature, but not slender in proportion, being commonly pretty full or plump, though not muscular. Neither doth the soft fleshiness seem ever to swell into corpulence, and many of the older people are rather spare or lean. The visage of most of them is round and full, and sometimes, also, broad, with large prominent cheeks; and above these, the face is frequently much depressed, or seems fallen in quite across between the temples, the nose also flattening at its base, with pretty wide nostrils, and a rounded point. The forehead rather low, the eyes small, black, and rather languishing than sparkling, the mouth round with large round thickish lips, the teeth tolerably equal and well set, but not remarkably white. They have either no beards at all, which was most commonly the case, or a small thin one upon the point of the chin, which does not arise from any natural defect of hair on that part, but from plucking it out more or less; for some of them, and particularly the old men, have not only considerable beards all over the chin, but whiskers or mustachios, both on the upper lip, and running from thence toward the lower jaw obliquely downward.[42] Their eye-brows are also scanty and always narrow, but the hair of the head is in great abundance, very coarse and strong, and without a single exception, black, straight, and lank, or hanging down over the shoulders; the neck is short; the arms and body have no particular mark of beauty or elegance in their formation, but are rather clumsy; and the limbs in all are very small in proportion to the other parts, and crooked or ill made, with large feet badly shaped and projecting ankles. This last defect seems, in a great measure, to arise from their sitting so much on their hams or knees, both in their canoes and houses.
Their colour we could never positively determine, as their bodies were incrusted with paint and dirt; though, in particular cases, when these were well rubbed off, the whiteness of the skin appeared almost to equal that of Europeans, though rather of that pale effete cast which distinguishes those of our southern nations. Their children, whose skins had never been stained with paint, also equalled ours in whiteness. During their youth, some of them have no disagreeable look, if compared to the generality of the people; but this seems to be entirely owing to the particular animation attending that period of life, for after attaining a certain age, there is hardly any distinction. Upon the whole, a very remarkable sameness seems to characterize the countenances of the whole nation, a dull phlegmatic want of expression, with very little variation, being strongly marked in all of them.