are few in number.  These last consist chiefly of wristlets of the fibres of a plant—­and armlets of the same, wound round with cordage, are in nearly universal use.  Necklaces of fragments of reed strung on a thread, or of cordage passing under the arms and crossed over the back, and girdles of finely twisted human hair, are occasionally worn by both sexes and the men sometimes add a tassel of the hair of the possum or flying squirrel, suspended in front.  A piece of stick or bone thrust into the perforation in the nose completes the costume.  Like the other Australians, the Port Essington blacks are fond of painting themselves with red, yellow, white, and black, in different styles, considered appropriate to dancing, fighting, mourning, etc.

These people construct no huts except during the rainy season, when they put up a rude and temporary structure of bark.  Their utensils are few in number, consisting merely of fine baskets of the stems of a rush-like plant, and others of the base of the leaf of the Seaforthia palm, the latter principally used for containing water.  Formerly bark canoes were in general use, but they are now completely superseded by others, hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, which they procure ready-made from the Malays, in exchange for tortoise-shell, and in return for assistance in collecting trepang.

The aboriginal weapons are clubs and spears—­of the latter the variety is very great, there being at least fourteen distinct kinds.  Their clubs are three in number, made of the tough heavy wood called wallaru, a kind of gumtree, the ironbark of New South Wales; one is cylindrical, four feet long, tapering at each extremity; the other two, of similar length, are compressed, with sharp edges—­one narrow, the other about four inches in greatest width, and resembling a cricket-bat in shape.  These weapons on account of their great weight are used only at close quarters, and are never thrown like the waddy of New South Wales.  The spears of the Port Essington natives may be divided into two classes—­first, those thrown with the hand alone, and second, those propelled by the additional powerful leverage afforded by the throwing-stick.  The hand-spears are made entirely of wood, generally the wallaroo, in one or two pieces, plain at the point or variously toothed and barbed; a small light spear of the latter description is sometimes thrown with a short cylindrical stick ornamented at one end with a large bunch of twisted human hair.  The spears of the second class are shafted with reed.  The smallest, which is no bigger than an arrow, is propelled by a large flat and supple throwing-stick to a great distance, but not with much precision.  Of the larger ones (from eight to twelve feet in length) the two most remarkable are headed with a pointed, sharp-edged, flatly-triangular piece of quartz or fine-grained basalt, procured from the mountains beyond the isthmus.  These large reed-shafted spears are thrown with a stiff flat throwing-stick a yard long, and with pretty certain effect within sixty paces.