fiefoe

The natives：

The Tahitian's hunting knives were made out of wood, their fish hooks out of mother-of-pearl.. The Europeans clanked and glittered with metal.
Among the able seamen the initial going grate was one ship's nail for one ordinary fuck, but hyper-inflation soon set in.
"Whenever a surf broke near them [they] dived under it with infinite ease, rising up on the other side; but their chief amusement was carried on by the stern of an old canoe, with this before them they swam out as far as the outermost breach, then one or two would get into it and opposing the blunt end to the breaking wave were hurried in with incredible swiftness. Sometimes they were carried almost ashore but generally the wave broke over them before they were half way, in which case the diver quickly rose on the other side with the canoe in their hands, which was towed out again and the same method repeated."
The skin was pierced with a block of sharpened wooden pins, and impregnated with a purple-black vegetable dye mixed with coconut oil.
These people are free from all smells of mortality.
Thought there is an extraordinarily calm, almost aristocratic, beauty about (Omai's) presence, it was not clear if he is Bank's companion or his trophy (in the painting.)
Omai.. became a sort of guide and impresario for visiting Westerners, ironically finding himself doing Banks's job in reverse.

The outsider:

(Mungo Park) realised that it was he - the heroic white man - who was in reality the lonely, ignorant, pitiable, motherless and unloved outcast... he gave the woman four brass buttons from his coat before he left, a genuinely precious gift.
"At this moment, painful as my reflections were, the extraordinary beauty of a small moss in fructification, irresistibly caught my eye. I mention this to show from what trifling circumstance the mind will sometimes derive consolation; for though the whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its roots, leaves, and capsular, without admiration."

"Age of Wonder"