Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia Volume II Part 45

To paint the body red seems also a custom of the natives in all parts that I have visited: but the most constant use of colours both white and red appears on the narrow shield or hieleman (see below) which is seldom to be found without some vestiges of both colours about the carving with which they are also ornamented.*

(*Footnote. "A German pays no attention to the ornament of his person; his shield is the object of his care; and this he decorates with the liveliest colours." Tacitus de Mor. Germ. c.6.)

RAISED SCARS ON ARMS AND BREAST.

The "large punctures or ridges raised on different parts of their bodies, some in straight and others in curved lines" distinguish the Australian natives wherever they have been yet seen and, in describing these raised scars, I have quoted the words of Captain Cook as the most descriptive although having reference to the natives of Adventure Bay, in one of the most southern isles of Van Diemen's Land, when first seen in 1777.

CUTTING THEMSELVES IN MOURNING.

It is also customary for both men and women to cut themselves in mourning for relations. I have seen old women in particular bleeding about the temples from such self-inflicted wounds.*

(*Footnote. "We often read of people cutting themselves, in Holy Writ, when in great anguish; but we are not commonly told what part they wounded. The modern Arabs, it seems, gash their arms which with them are often bare: it appears from a pa.s.sage of Jeremiah that the ancients wounded themselves in the same part, 'Every head shall be bald, and every beard clipt; upon all hands shall be cuttings and upon the loins sackcloth.' Chapter 48:37." Harmer volume 4 page 436.)

AUTHORITY OF OLD MEN.

Respect for age is universal among the aborigines. Old men, and even old women, exercise great authority among a.s.sembled tribes and "rule the big war" with their voices when both spears and boomerangs are ready to be thrown.* Young men are admitted into the order of the seniors according to certain rites which their coradjes, or priests, have the sagacity to keep secret and render mysterious.

(*Footnote. Leviticus 19:32. "Thou shalt rise up before the h.o.a.ry head, and honour the face of the old man." The Lacedemonians had a law that aged persons should be reverenced like fathers. See also Homer Iliad 15:204 et 23:788. Odyss. 13:141.)

LAW AGAINST EATING EMU FLESH.

No young men are allowed to eat the flesh or eggs of the emu, a kind of luxury which is thus reserved exclusively for the old men and the women.

I understood from Piper, who abstained from eating emu when food was very scarce, that the ceremony necessary in this case consisted chiefly in being rubbed all over with emu fat by an old man. Richardson, one of our party, was an old man and Piper reluctantly allowed himself to be rubbed with emu fat by Richardson; but from that time he had no objection to eat the flesh of that bird. The threatened penalty was that young men, after eating it, would be afflicted with sores all over the body.

NATIVE DOGS.

The native dog, so common in Australia, is not found in Tasmania; while on the other hand two animals, the Dasyurus ursinus and Thylacynus, exist in Tasmania but have not been found hitherto in Australia. Have these been extirpated in Australia by the dog on his introduction subsequently to the opening of the straits? It may be observed that this is the more likely as the above-mentioned species found in Van Diemen's Land only, consist of those two unable to climb and avoid such an enemy. The Australian natives evince great humanity in their behaviour to these dogs. In the interior we saw few natives who were not followed by some of these animals, although they did not appear of much use to them. The women not unfrequently suckle the young pups and so bring them up, but these are always miserably thin so that we knew a native's dog from a wild one by the starved appearance of the former. The howl of a native dog in the desert wilds is the most melancholy sound imaginable, much resembling that of a tame dog when he has lost his master. We find no remains of this genus among the fossils and it seems therefore probable that the dog accompanied the native, wherever he came from.

FEMALES CARRYING CHILDREN.

We trace a further resemblance between this rude people and the orientals in their common method of carrying children on their shoulders; and the sketch of Turandurey with Ballandella so mounted (Plate 24) affords the best ill.u.s.tration of a pa.s.sage in Scripture which has very much puzzled commentators.* But the savage tribes of mankind as they approach nearer to the condition of animals seem to preserve a stronger resemblance to themselves and to each other. The uniform stability of their manners seems a natural consequence of the uncultivated state of their faculties; and it is satisfactory to discover such direct ill.u.s.trations of ancient history among these rude and primitive specimens of our race.

(*Footnote. "Was the custom anciently the reverse of this? So it might be imagined from Isaiah 49:22. 'They shall bring thy sons in their arms and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders'"! Harmer's Oriental Customs.)

WEAPONS. THE SPEAR. WOOMERA.

The weapons used by the natives are not more remarkable and peculiar in their construction than general in their use on every sh.o.r.e of New Holland. The spear is thrown by means of a woomera which is a slight rod about three feet long having at one end a niche to receive the end of the spear. The missile is shot forward by this means with great force and accuracy of direction; for by the peculiar method of throwing the spear the woomera affords a great additional impetus from this most ingenious lengthening of the arm to that extent.*

(*Footnote. For the shape of the woomera see Moyengully Plate 49 above; and the manner of throwing the spear may be seen in Plate 8 Volume 1.)

THE BOOMERANG. ITS PROBABLE ORIGIN.

The boomerang, a thin curved missile, can be thrown by a skilful hand so as to rise upon the air and thus to deviate from the ordinary path of projectiles, its crooked course being nevertheless equally under control.

It is of the form here represented, being about two feet four inches long. These weapons are cut according to the grain from the curved parts of acacia or other standing trees of compact hard wood. They usually weigh about 9 1/2 ounces. One side, which is the uppermost in throwing, is slightly convex, and is sometimes elaborately carved. The lower side is flat and plain. The boomerang is held, not as a sabre, but sickle-wise, or concave towards the thrower and, as a rotatory motion is imparted to it when sent off, the air presents so much resistance to the flat side and so little to the sharp edge as it cuts forward, that the long-sustained flight of the whirling missile seems independent of the common effect of gravitation.

The native, from long practice, can do astonishing things with this weapon. He seems to determine with great certainty what its crooked and distant flight shall be, and how and where it is to end. Thus he frequently amuses himself in hurling the formidable weapon to astonishing heights and distances from one spot to which the missile returns to fall beside him. Sometimes the earth is made a fulcrum to which the boomerang descends only to resume a longer and more sustained flight, or to leap, perhaps, over a tree and strike an object behind it.

The contrivance probably originated in the utility of such a missile for the purpose of killing ducks where they are very numerous, as on the interior rivers and lagoons and where, accordingly, we find it much more in use than on the seacoast and better made, being often covered with good carving.* (See Cambo, Volume 1, also small figures in Plate 28 above.)

(*Footnote. That Dampier saw this weapon also on the western coast in lat.i.tude 16 degrees 50 minutes is evident from the following observation.

"These swords were afterwards found to be made of wood and rudely shaped something like a cutla.s.s.")

SHIELD OR HIELEMAN.

There is also much originality in the shield or hieleman of these people.

It is merely a piece of wood of little thickness and 2 feet 8 inches long, tapering to each end, cut to an edge outwards and having a handle or hole in the middle behind the thickest part. This is made of light wood and affords protection from missiles, chiefly by the facility with which it is turned round the centre or handle.

SKILL IN APPROACHING THE KANGAROO.

Great ingenuity is necessary and is as cleverly practised by the natives in approaching the kangaroo. This they display in creeping, stalking with bushes, advancing behind trees, etc. and to such a degree are their wits sharpened by their appet.i.tes that they can even distinguish when the kangaroo kills a fly; and they consider in their proceedings, from the habit of the kangaroo to kill flies and smell the blood, whether the animal may discover from the blood the fly contains that men are near.

FOOD OF THE NATIVES. MODES OF COOKING.

The natives are accustomed to cook such animals by digging a hole in the ground, making a fire in it, and heating the stones found about. The kangaroo is placed in this hole with the skin on, and is covered with heated embers or warm stones.

OPOSSUM. SINGEING.

The opossum which const.i.tutes the more ordinary food of the native is not cooked so much, but only singed, so as to have a flavour of the singed wool; but it is nevertheless palatable enough even to a white man.

VEGETABLE FOOD. THE SHOVEL.

The young natives of the interior usually carry a small wooden shovel (see foreground figure, Plate 12 Volume 1) with one end of which they dig up different roots, and with the other break into the large anthills for the larvae, which they eat: the labour necessary to obtain a mouthful even, of such indifferent food, being thus really more than would be sufficient for the cultivation of the earth according to the more provident arrangements of civilised men. Yet in a land affording such meagre support the Australian savage is not a cannibal: while the New Zealander, who inhabits a much more productive region, notoriously feasts on human flesh.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

Were it expedient to enter here into further details, or upon a longer description of the natives of Australia, I might quote largely from Captain Cook's account of those he saw at Adventure Bay, Van Diemen's Land, as being more detailed and descriptive, both of the natives in the interior, and of those also around the whole circ.u.mference of Australia, than any I could give. In the descriptions by Dampier and other navigators who have touched on any part of these sh.o.r.es we recognise the same natives with all their characteristics, and are led to conclude that they are derived from the same stock and, as the judicious compiler of the first History of New Holland considered it most probable from this and other circ.u.mstances "that the number is small, and that the interior parts of the country are inhabited,"* I may observe that I have had no reason to entertain a contrary opinion from what I saw of the interior country beyond the Darling. The native population is very thinly spread over the regions I have explored, amounting to nearly a seventh part of Australia. I cannot estimate the number at more than 6000; but on the contrary I believe it to be considerably less. They may increase rapidly if wild cattle become numerous; and as an instance I may refer to the number and good appearance of the Cudjallagong tribe near Macquarie range where they occasionally fell in with a herd of wild cattle.

(*Footnote. History of New Holland pages 31 and 232.)

DESTRUCTION OF THE KANGAROO.

The kangaroo disappears from cattle runs, and is also killed by stockmen merely for the sake of the skin; but no mercy is shown to the natives who may help themselves to a bullock or a sheep. Such a state of things must infallibly lead to the extirpation of the aboriginal natives, as in Van Diemen's Land, unless timely measures are taken for their civilisation and protection. I have heard some affecting allusions made by natives to the white men's killing the kangaroo. At present almost every stockman has several strong kangaroo dogs; now it would be only an act of justice towards the aborigines to prohibit white men by law from killing these creatures which are as essential to the natives as cattle are to the Europeans. The prohibition would be at least a proof of the disposition of the strangers to act as humanely as they possibly could towards the natives. If wild cattle on the contrary become numerous the natives also might increase in number and, if not civilised and instructed now, might become formidable and implacable enemies then, as no absolute right to kill even wild cattle would be conceded to them. The evils likely to result from such circ.u.mstances were apparent both in the commencement and termination of my first journey; but although the desert character of the interior renders such a state of things less likely to happen, at least on a larger scale, the unfortunate race whom we have found on the sh.o.r.es of Australia are not the less ent.i.tled to our protection.

CIVILISATION OF THE ABORIGINES.

Some adequate provision for their civilisation and maintenance is due on our part to this race of men, were it only in return for the means of existence of which we are depriving them. The bad example of the cla.s.s of persons sent to Australia should be counteracted by some serious efforts to civilise and instruct these aboriginal inhabitants. That they are capable of civilisation and instruction has been proved recently in the case of a number who were sentenced for some offence to be confined with a chaingang on Goat Island in Sydney harbour. By the exertions of Mr.

Ferguson, who was I believe a missionary gentleman, these men were taught in five months to read tolerably well, and also to explain in English the meaning of the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments. During that time they had been initiated in the craft of stone-cutting and building so as to completely erect a small house. They grew fat and muscular and appeared really stronger men, when well fed, than the white convicts.

The natives have also proved very good shepherds when any of them have been induced, by proper encouragement and protection, to take charge of a flock. Tommy Came-first, one of the lads who travelled with me, had previously tended sheep for a year and had given great satisfaction.

My experiment with the little native girl, Ballandella, will be useful I trust in developing hereafter the mental energies of the Australian aborigines for, by the last accounts from Sydney, I am informed that she reads as well as any white child of the same age.

CHAPTER 3.15.

Geological specimens collected.

Connection between soil and rocks.

Limestone.

Granite.