# History of Australia/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.
AUSTRALIA.
It is pleasant to reflect that the name Australia was selected by the gallant Flinders; though, with his customary modesty, he suggested rather than adopted it. "Had I," he says in his "Voyage to Terra Australis," "permitted myself any innovation upon the original term Terra Australis, it would have been to convert it into Australia, as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth."
Though insulated, Australia is so large that many writers speak of it as a continent. It contains about three millions of square miles, and the whole of Europe contains only about one million more. But for its conditions of climate and soil, and the consequent limitations of its capacity to produce food for man and to supply his various wants, it might give scope for many powerful nations. Usually in a large territory high lands exist, and from them flow perennial streams, upon which navigation from the sea is possible; cultivation follows them as naturally ​ as the waters flow; men congregate in cities to avail themselves of surrounding advantages; population and wealth go hand in hand, and the country is called great. Vast as is Australia, no high lands are in or near its centre. One chain of hills or mountains runs from the base of the Cape York Peninsula along the eastern coast, its highest points culminating in the Snowy Mountains or Australian Alps in the south-east, where the summit of Mount Kosciusko exceeds 7300 feet above the sea. Of this cordillera the watershed is sometimes less, seldom is it more, than one hundred miles from the east coast. A spur from it runs westward from the Snowy Mountains through the Colony of Victoria, dividing the northern waters, which are affluents of the Murray, from the shorter streams which run into Bass's Straits and the Southern Ocean.
Curving from their sources in the Snowy Mountains, the Murray, the Tumut, and Murrumbidgee rivers find their way to the plains of the interior before they join the Darling River, which drains an enormous area, receiving tributaries from the western slopes of the cordillera in New South Wales and Queensland.
In both these colonies various rivers find their way eastward to the Pacific from the cordillera; and from Queensland other rivers flow to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Roughly speaking, it may be said that westward of the 140th degree of E. longitude the well-watered portion of Australia disappears; the eastern cordillera being the genius of the difference.
Western Australia is poor in rivers, and the Great Australian Bight on the south coast presents the most irredeemably barren front to the Southern Ocean.
To the west of Adelaide the combined Murray and Darling Rivers carry their tribute to the sea at Encounter Bay; but evaporation and percolation have diminished its waters long before Lake Alexandrina receives it.
The Yarra Yarra at Melbourne in a comparatively short course flows from spurs of the Australian Alps, and several ever-flowing rivers run from them with rapid courses to the ​district of Gippsland before meandering through a series of lakes to the Bea. The Snowy River, still more to the east, plunges from mountains in New South Wales across the border between that colony and Victoria, within whose territory it finds its way to the Southern Ocean less than a hundred miles from Cape Howe.
A general glance at the physical aspect of Australia, shows (between the one hundred and twentieth and one hundred and thirty-fourth parallels of longitude) hundreds of thousands of miles of land which are almost waterless, and for long years defied the efforts of explorers. The rarity or absence of surface water was as effectual a barrier as the icy regions of the North Pole. The rainfall, which on the points abutting on the sea near Adelaide, and the higher circumjacent hills, averages about twenty inches annually, becomes gradually less in a northerly direction, and amounts only to about live inches and a-half between the twenty-eight and thirtieth parallels of latitude in South Australia, and is perhaps still less over a large portion of Western Australia. Passing northwards, the rainfall increases as tropical influences prevail, and at Port Darwin exceeds that near Adelaide.
But even the most sterile tracts, unlike the brown African desert, are seldom devoid of grass, herbs, or shrubs. The dreaded spinifex (Triodia irritans), useless for food, and harassing by its prickliness, may perhaps contribute to ameliorate the dryness of the waste. For the most part the country is level, or gently undulating, but there are occasional elevations. The atmosphere is pure as that of the desert. The interior of Australia might, in the winter months, be the sanatorium of the world. Crisp, clear, and exhilarating, the very air exalts the spirits. The sun is a present joy. But in the long days of summer his heat is excessive. The earth receives and reflects his parching ardours; animals gasp, and the dryness is oppressive to man, though more easily borne, and far less injurious, than the damp, sweltering heat of equatorial zones.
The thousands who resort to Egypt from Europe would wonder at the assertion that in Australia there is a climate as enjoyable as that of the desert, and without many of its disadvantages. Climatologists differ as to the ​ exceptional causes of the dryness and purity of the Australian air. Some ascribe it to the effect of a depressed and generally dry interior, others to the insular position, the great Southern Ocean, and the unimpeded courses of the trade-winds. Many causes, no doubt, concur.
The amount of rainfall is not inconsiderable on the east coast and in the cordillera. In Sydney the average is twice as much as in London. In Melbourne it equals that in London.
But at uncertain periods drought afflicts the land. The streams disappear on their slow course to the interior; the herbage is burnt to a colour browner than stubble. Where cattle and sheep depend for water only on what they find at a natural stream or pool even the dry stalks disappear in the neighbourhood. The weaker animals cannot travel to the food, becoming more distant daily by trampling and consumption; they sink in the mud at the head of the diminishing water, and are too weak to struggle out of it. They die, and their unburied corpses taint the air. One great accession to the pasturing capacity of Australia was brought about by dividing "runs, with fences, and (by damming up watercourses or sinking wells) shortening the distance which live stock traversed to obtain water.
When the country is parched by drought, the setting in of a hot wind dismays the inhabitants. Meteorologists are still making and comparing observations to account for the violence of this phenomenon. To the sea-coast on the Hunter, at Sydney, at South Australia, and yet more intensely, by contrast with the average temperature, at Victoria, the hot winds sweep with a blast like that of a furnace. A person suddenly leaving a substantially built, and therefore a cool house, can hardly believe that the scorching blast which salutes him is not caused by a ​ neighbouring fire. Fortunately the hot winds are rare, occurring only in the summer, and then only for one, two, or at most three days; lulling at night, and raging again in the forenoon.
In the interior, if a fire occurs simultaneously with a hot wind, and the growth of grass has been abundant in the spring, the devastation is as vast as it is rapid. The raging wind sweeps up the kindled grass, whirls it forward to set the fire-demon at work in countless fresh places, and amid the roar of the wind, the crackling of boughs and grass, the dense and lurid smoke, the settler sometimes vainly strives to save his homestead from the advancing flames.
One hot wind day is notable in the annals of Victoria as Black Thursday. The air was darkened with gloom which terrified; the captain of a ship in Bass's Straits lowered his top-gallant masts in expectation of some terrible convulsion, when at two o'clock in the day it was dark as midnight. It was not till Friday morning that the darkness waned.
In a prolonged drought the "heaven is as iron and the earth as brass." What the colonists call "the break-up of a drought" is welcome as spring in cloudy Europe. During the drought a tantalizing but common phenomenon is the massing of dark, rain-promising clouds. The settler eyes them with hope, and just as he expects their blessings a wind-storm rives them into thinness, and they gradually disappear, leaving no wrack behind. The end of a drought, after numerous disappointments, is generally sudden. The evening may have been fine; in the morning the rain is descending in torrents. One severe drought, in which thousands of sheep and cattle had perished, and many more had been driven to fresh pastures to save their lives, was thus broken up. For nearly seven days and nights, almost without intermission the flood-gates were opened. The rivers rose to unexampled height. Many lives were lost. The Nammoy river carried away to the far south the wrecks of buildings and the carcases of sheep. There were instances in which all animals left alive by the drought were torn from their owner by the flood. When the affluents of the Darling escape from the cordillera, they ​ spread in flood time over many miles of land on each side of their ordinary channel.
But a flood is a "sweet restorer" of parched Nature. In an inconceivably short space of time the plains which appeared a mass of dust are sprinkled with emerging green, and grass and herbs leap into redundant life. In a few weeks the formerly perishing cattle lose the clammy disorder of their hair and their dull sad look. Their coats become sleek, their colours bright, and they gambol on the green. It is well when the owner, deriving such direct blessing from heaven, does not, Jeshurun-like, forget to whom he is beholden.
Not by laborious cultivation of sown grasses, but by consuming what nature offered, has the Australian flock-owner been enriched. One characteristic of Australian grasses deserves particular comment. They are not so succulent as many European kinds; but whether in consequence of their inherent qualities, or of the climate, or of both these causes, they support strength in a manner unknown elsewhere. A horse obtaining no food but the grass that he browses upon can without distress carry his rider more than fifty miles without check, and repeat the performance for many days. A high-spirited horse, fairly treated, wants no artificial food to keep up his courage, and maintains his condition although he has several long journeys in the week. It would, of course, be impossible that the fast work of racing or hunting could be performed by a grass-fed horse or an untrained one.
It has become an article of belief that the hot winds themselves, though unpleasant, are wholesome; that, like actual cantery, they exorcise evil effects; that by their force malaria and unhealthy exhalations are destroyed. If it be so, Australia should have a healthy future before her; but the carelessness of man may defeat the bounty of Providence. Neglect of precautions proved necessary elsewhere may neutralize even the natural advantages of the south. It is hard to imagine that if the air were not purified, as by fire, by means of its dryness, its cities and villages could have been exempt from the scourge of Indian cholera, as yet unknown in Australia. The influx of Chinese and others can scarcely fail in time to ​ introduce it in Northern Australia, and then it will be found whether the purer and drier air of the south can repel it absolutely.
The mountain chain, which qualifies the climate and the soil, yields also the minerals which make Australia famous. Iron was found in Tasmania by early voyagers. It was long known to exist in rich ore in New South Wales. Coal was found in the earliest days at the Hunter river. The Hunter river coalfield is estimated to exceed 8000 square miles, and New South Wales is deemed to possess 24,000 square miles of coalfields. In Queensland other large fields exist, but no important seams have yet been found except near the east coast cordillera. Gold is found in its flanks. In New South Wales at Bathurst and elsewhere, throughout Victoria, and in many parts of Queensland, the "yellow slave that puts odds among the rout of nations" has been found and exported by the ton. In 1892, after much search, the great granite tract of Western Australia was found to yield on its flanks rich stores of gold, and attracted speculators and scrapers from all parts of the world. Copper made South Australia rich, and abounds in New South Wales and Queensland. Tin crops up in the cordillera between New England and Darling Downs.
The cost of production, the measure of which is mainly the price of labour, has alone prevented the extension of iron-smelting and tin and copper mining. Diamonds, small, but of good quality, have been procured in the cordillera, and precious stones of many kinds.
Timber, hard and durable, and excellent for the carpenter's craft, grows in vast forests on the flanks of the cordillera, and various forms of eucalyptus are scattered over the whole island. The jarrah of Western Australia (Eucalyptus marginata) has a peculiar reputation for its power to defy decay when submerged and exposed to the attacks of the dreaded teredo, and has been largely exported to India. The iron-bark (Eucalyptus sideroxylon) became from its durability a synonym for toughness. The fragrant-wooded ​ myall (Acacia pendula) formed a pleasant feature on the skirts of Liverpool Plains and elsewhere, drooping with delicate foliage. Nearly all the trees are evergreen, but the general hue is sombre. The currejong (cooramin) of the forest, and the casuarina which lines the rivers, stand with brighter green in cheering contrast to the dulness of surrounding leaves. Amongst the mountain forests and dense underwood all tints may be found, but they are reserved for him who woos them, being far from the thoroughfares of travel. The steep eastern flanks of the cordillera are for the most part thickly wooded, and dense jungles fill the ravines in the mountains and follow the streams downwards. On the less precipitous slopes to the interior an open forest is soon reached, and park-like glades, downs, and plains abound, until the great depression of the island is reached at an elevation of from six to eight hundred feet above the sea level. The larger streams are accompanied by lines of vegetation welcome to thirsty travellers. Much of the interior is not bare, but covered with a low growth of what the colonists call scrub-intermingled shrubs and small trees.
Some early writers, following Strzelecki's surmise, assumed that the cordillera, interrupted by Bass's Straits, reappeared in Tasmania. Mr. A. R. C. Selwyn, when geologist of Victoria, showed that this surmise was incorrect, and that the true extension of the cordillera is its deflection westward which divides the Murray river waters from the declivity to the sea. In Victoria the rocks which compose the chain are in great part of the upper and lower Silurian age, and in these have been found the gold deposits.
The lower Silurian rock system Mr. Selwyn estimated at a thickness of 35,000 feet. He it was who pointed out the fallacy of the generally-received opinion that gold would not be found at considerable depth, and in deference to his judgment Sir Roderick Murchison qualified in a later edition of his 'Siluria' a statement which was at variance with Mr. Selwyn's opinion. An area of more than 30,000 square miles presented prospective advantages to the gold-miner in Victoria alone. As the lower part of the Murray is approached, on leaving the hill country, the great tertiary depression of the interior is reached, which extends to its ​rim at the base of the cordillera. Emerging from it, from south to north, are patches of granitic formation. Westward of the boundary between South Australia and Western Australia these outcrops are less numerous, but when the 123rd degree of E. longitude is reached an enormous tract of granite prevails, with but a narrow fringe of other formations between it and the western ocean. Proofs of active volcanic agency in the past are abundant.
The cordillera in New South Wales presents the same large tracts of Silurian formation, interspersed with granite and basalt, and broken by the vast tract of sandstone which encircles Sydney and spreads to the confines of the rich valley of the Hunter river. The bulk of the interior presents a champaign of tertiary formation. From the 32nd parallel of south latitude to the Gulf of Carpentaria a wide cretaceous band intersects it, while the eastern cordillera abounds in granite, carboniferous, metamorphic, volcanic, and Silurian outcrops.
In a physical sketch of the country the great Barrier Reef deserves mention. After Cook's adventure at the Endeavour River, many ships were wrecked, and new dangers were continually discovered. But the shortness of the route and the calmness of the sea allured the mariner, and reefs extending for hundreds of miles, surrounded by countless coral formations seen and unseen, did not deter the adventurous Anglo-Saxon from the pursuit of gain at the risk of the grave. Steam eventually freed the navigation from its greatest dangers.
Of indigenous fruits Australia could not boast. None but scanty berries incapable of yielding sustenance to man were found. They were pleasant to the curious, but almost useless to the hungry. But what it did not naturally yield Australia was prompt to receive. The rich alluvial soils on the river-flats of the Hawkesbury, the Hunter, the Mackay, and the Clarence are like the banks of the Nile in responding to the farmers' efforts; the basaltic soils of various portions of the cordillera are almost as productive, and are secure from damage by floods. Various elevations invite various fruits. The orange-groves of Sydney stand ​ where currants and gooseberries would shrivel in the heat, but within eighty miles the latter bear fruit luxuriantly on the cordillera. The pine-apples of Queensland are exchanged for the apples and pears of the south, and as far as Providence is concerned, there is no good withholden from the dwellers in Australia.
The climate and soil are deemed specially favourable for the production of wine of the best quality, although the delicacy of the manufacture and the want of skilled labour have made it a work of time to ascertain where and under what conditions the various grapes should be grown and their juices secured. Yet the wines made at Camden Park obtained distinction at the Paris Exhibition in 1855, and at an exhibition in Melbourne in 1880 a prize offered by the Emperor of Germany was won by wine made at Yering in Victoria. Tables of statistics will show the general productiveness of the soil.
No wild beasts of the forest threatened a colonist, as in old time in Mesopotamia. The dog, probably landed by Malay proas in bygone centuries, was the largest beast of prey. Unlike other animals on the continent, the dog was not marsupial. The native cat' of the colonists, a spotted creature of the order of Dasyuride, was the largest carnivorous marsupial of the continent. Kangaroos of many kinds, the wombat (Phascolomys ursinus), emus, swans, pelicans, geese, tribes of ducks, the platypus, and fish and eels, abounded upon the earth or in the waters; and from the trees, at his time of need, the Australian easily procured the opossum, the native bear (Phascolarctos cinereus), and flying squirrel. A gigantic bat was named a flying fox by the early colonists, and a gigantic swift which dwells in the mountain rocks might often be seen at dusk nearly a hundred miles from the home it could reach at any time with more than the rapidity of the wind. Snakes, some harmless and some deadly, and iguanas were continually seen. In the northern rivers and on the north-eastern coast the crocodile was found.
Insect life is redundant in this land of the sun, and lizards dart with fanciful speed amongst the grass and stones. The birds of the forest glittered with brilliant ​colours under the clear Australian sky, and the shrill cries of swarms of parroquets glancing through the air imparted a foreign feeling even to those who were not already wearily conscious of their exile from England. Quail and snipe are occasionally abundant, though sometimes absent from a caprice unexplained by naturalists and unwelcome to sportsmen. The wedge-tailed eagle and numerous hawks soar for their prey, and descend upon it like a thunder-bolt. The bustard (turkey of the colonists) has been seen struck in air by an eagle and tumbling helpless to earth. The rare white hawk condescends to no carrion, but strikes his game for himself. The ibis visits in large flocks the cordillera country at intervals, and the early colonists gathered from its coming an apprehension of drought, believing that the evaporation of the waters of the interior drove it towards the high lands. Pigeons of large size and doves of singular beauty abound. Though song-birds are rare, the native thrush, without the sustained note of the European congener, has perhaps a mellower voice. The startling and melodious voice of the bird called by the early settlers "the coachman," from the likeness of his note to the crack of a whip, astonishes him who sees from how small a bird such sound can come. The bellbird, with metallic but mellow pipe, warns the wanderer that he is near water in some sequestrated nook. The skylark is common, but soars not so high in air as his northern congener, and has no song comparable to that of the lark of England. The clattering laugh of the gigantic king-fisher (the laughing jackass) was eccentric and unmusical, but the joyous note of the magpie (Gymnorhina tibicens), as he trolled his flutelike morning carol, was always pleasing.
The flowers of the forest are plentiful, and excite wonder now, as they did when in their honour Cook's landing-place was called Botany Bay. The lily, the waratah, and many others claim admiration from the eye. The sweet-scented pittosporum and boronia may challenge other lands to produce an odour which surpasses theirs. Numerous varieties of the mimosa make the air heavy with perfume, and the wafted odour of the musk-tree after rain seems to have come unalloyed from the Spice Islands. The flame-tree ​ (of the order Sterculaceae) of New South Wales bursts upon the eyes of the traveller with a blaze that justifies its name, and the orange masses of the silky oak of the Clarence river (Grevillia robusta), though less vivid, have a richness almost as startling.
In Tasmania the west and great part of the north are occupied by the Silurian formation which is found in the south-east of Australia, while volcanic rocks seam the centre of the island, and carboniferous strata characterize a great part of the west. The smaller area of the island (about 15,000,000 acres) and comparative superiority of its mountain heights furnished permanent streams, and the forest, when first seen by Europeans, asserted sway over almost all the soil which was not covered with water.
The colonists strove early to discover coal-measures which could be profitably worked. They sought for gold also, and found it, though not in the abundance which prevailed on the mainland of Australia. The tin mines which they discovered in later years were a more unmixed good.
The character of the soil, produced from the rocks which form the mountains and hills, promises a long continuance of fertility in a climate favourably modified by the closely-surrounding ocean.
The marsupial order prevailed as in Australia, but animals unknown on the Continent were found in the island. The tiger of the settlers (Thylacynus cynocephalus), the devil (Dasyurus or Sarcophilus ursinus), both carnivorous and savage, were in the island only, and were a problem to naturalists. There were, however, fossil remains of both animals on the mainland; and of a fiercer carnivore, large as a lion, but with feller weapons, which preyed upon gigantic kangaroos, now like itself (Thylacoleo carnifex), long extinct. The kangaroo and wombat were in both countries, as was the platypus, which, with its duck-bill, webbed feet, and mole-like body, once puzzled scientific men in ​ Europe. The poisonous nature of a wound from the spur of the male was well known to the aborigines, but was disputed by some persons, although the orifice in the spur indicated a purpose. Moreover, it was at certain periods only that venom was believed by the natives to be emitted. The dog of the mainland was not found in the island.
Most of the birds, and even the emu, were common in both places. The fish most highly prized by epicures–the trumpeter—was found only on the island coasts, and most frequently at the south; but whiting, flounders, and garfish vindicated the excellence of the fish of the sea, while in the Murray and other rivers of Australia the cod-fish, a gigantic perch, was esteemed by some as a delicacy.
Snakes were so numerous that when Lady Franklin (the wife of a governor), to rid Tasmania of them, offered a shilling for each snake killed, no less than 14,000 were produced in one year. Where lagoons abounded, and on moist margins of rivers in Australia, snakes were always numerous. In both countries the hawk tribe destroyed them. One in Australia, a keen but small brown bird, seemed to take pleasure in the dangerous sport. Darting down, he seized the snake near the head with his talons, and spreading his wings, the tips touching the ground, with firm but quivering tension, prevented the coils of the snake from involving him, and thus clutched his victim till ​it was powerless. The natives watched and admired the feat frequently.
The gigantic king-fisher, the laughing jackass of Australia (Dacelo gigas), destroyed innumerable snakes, centipedes, scorpions, and all kinds of insect vermin, and, as various venomous snakes existed both on the mainland and on the island, those who knew the habits of the bird were loth to see it destroyed.
Over the lands thus glanced at tribes of men had roamed as lords long before Spaniard, Dutchman, or Englishman laid claim to the soil or to the title of discoverer. They subdued to their use the natural productions of the earth, but were innocent of any kind of agriculture. Ethnologists have been unable to determine whence they sprung, or how their occupation of Australia took place; but the weight of evidence implies that as powerful races rose to mastery in Hindostan and in the Malay Archipelago, the extruded weaker families drifted southwards and found new homes.
One learned writer, Dr. Latham, unable to account otherwise for the fact that the Tasmanians had hair differing from that of the natives of the mainland, was constrained to suppose that the former must "have come round Australia rather than across it." Yet he classed both families as varieties of a "Kelæenonesian race." In some islands of the Pacific he found it intermixed with the Papuan race, and it need hardly be said that the facilities for admixture were great on the northern coast of Australia, to which unnumbered shallops might in the course of centuries be ​ borne by wind and current from Sumbawa, Timor, or the Coral Sea. Thus also, by repeated additions of fresh families, would the language and physical appearance of the Australians be modified; but the structure of the language in New Guinea differed so essentially, in the use of prefixes, from the suffix forms of Australia, as to show that it was not by the Papuan race that Australia was peopled. More than one race has, however, been ascertained to exist in New Guinea.
The time is passing away in which observers can see the Australian natives as they were "when wild in woods the noble savage ran." It is interesting, therefore, to record the testimony of Dr. Pickering, a member of a scientific expedition fitted out by the United States of America. He reduced the remarkable races of mankind to eleven, of which the Australian was one.
After "surveying mankind from China to Peru," he wrote—"Strange as it may appear, I would refer to an Australian as the finest model of the human proportions I have ever met with; in muscular development combining perfect symmetry, activity, and strength, while his head might have compared with the antique bust of a philosopher."
​Dr. Pritchard, in his work upon the natural history of man, assigns the Australian to a Pelagian negro race. The absence of woolly hair made it necessary to modify the negro type so as to include the Australian, whose hair is for the most part wavy or lank, sometimes curly, with an occasional instance of close curls not more nearly allied to the woolly negro than are the heads of some Caucasians. He considers the race allied to the Arafuras, or Alforas, of the interior of New Guinea. It may well be that some families of that tribe were landed at or escaped to the neighbouring shore of Cape York. It may be equally true that the Alforas themselves were but a hive thrown off from Hindostan in pre-historic times. The coarser and shorter haired Tasmanian race he affirms more positively to be the Pelagian negro; but ethnologists writing in European studies, and travellers on the spot, could not account for the fact that in the Tasmanian race, remote from every land but Australia, there was so marked a difference between the human air on the island and that of the continent.
​There is no such towering elevation of an individual above the mass amongst savages as amongst civilized Caucasians; but comparing the savage with only the lower and uneducated European, it would be hazardous to affirm that the black is inferior to the white. Under existing conditions the former can produce no Shakspeare or Newton, but the latter can vie with it in types of degradation. Nor must it be forgotten that the first great poet produced by Russia was the grandson of a negress of full blood.
Surveying man throughout the globe, examining his structure, comparing the skulls of races, laterally, vertically, and by measurement of the base, Dr. Pritchard concluded ​ that there is in reality no material difference in human races, and that "of one blood were made all the nations of the earth." In spite of the manifold disintegrations of primitive speech, the researches of Max Müller point to the same decision by the independent path of comparative philology.
Though the Australian had an aptitude for language, by a singular infelicity it seems to have been thought easier to teach corrupted English than that of ordinary speech, and the colonists wantonly maimed their own language by addressing the natives in a barbarous jargon of mispronounced English words. The consequences were natural but misleading. Travellers' notes were often worthless. Their hosts could not converse with the natives except in a limited, inexpressive vocabulary, and the defect was imputed to the native, of whose language neither the traveller nor his host, the colonist, knew a word.
But as ignorance is often voluble in proportion to its excess, the passer-by accepted what he gathered in this perfunctory manner, and recorded it for the enlightenment of Europe. Sometimes when the native was weary of questions which he could not understand, he gave vent to an ejaculation of disgust, which was unduly recorded as an answer to the querist.
​ As soon as Governor Phillip had established communication, the natives comprehended his position of authority, and gave him the highest title known in their language, derived from the creative Spirit, and associated with age and the respect due to it. They then looked upon the invaders as prompted and controlled by the venerabile nomen of the ruler, and invited the officers to be present even at their secret ceremonies, to which in after years they would admit none but their most cherished friends.
There is sufficient similarity between many language-roots throughout the continent to prove, if it were needed, a common origin. The word for "eye" and the word for "foot," in a land where existence depended so much upon sight, and upon tracking enemies or game, have, as might have been expected, a close likeness in far-distant spots. The pronouns also betokened generally a common stock. The numerals in use were limited. In some tribes only three were at command, in most there were four. For the number "five" a word signifying "many" was resorted to. This poverty proved that Australian tribes derived no aid from the great Polynesian family which spread from the Sandwich Islands to those of New Zealand, where denary enumeration prevailed, and the Maori could count in thousands.
But their migration must be ascribed to another source than the Pacific, or must have preceded the appearance of the sea-kings of Hawaii and their island conquests. It would appear that in the hills of the Deccan are to be found the nearest kindred of the dark race which was expelled from Hindostan, which finds to this day holes in which to hide in Ceylon and in islands afterwards conquered by the Malays, and which spread undisturbed by persecution over the broad lands of Australia. That the Deccan tribes speak a Turanian dialect might be credited on the authority of Prof. Max Müller if it were not accepted by others. Prof. Huxley concludes, "from description," that the people are "undistinguishable from the Australian races."
The learned Sir W. W. Hunter informs us that the Dravidian tribes were forced southwards in Hindostan, ​ and that the grammatical relations of their dialects are "expressed by suffixes," which is true as to Australian languages. He declares of Bishop Caldwell, whom he calls "the great missionary scholar of the Dravidian tongue," that the bishop pointed out that the "South and Western Australian tribes use almost the same words for 'I,' 'thou,' 'he,' 'we,' 'you,' as the Dravidian fishermen on the Madras Coast." It seems that some of the wild hill tribes possessed a dual number and some did not. The Australian had a perfect form of dual. That all used flint weapons hardly needs to be said. We may believe that in a pre-historic age some powerful class or race of invaders sought to impose the peace of death upon the ancestors of the Australians in Hindostan.
Hunted and despised, their badge was sufferance, their safety in concealment or flight. They could not share the civilization of their persecutors, although for centuries they marauded from their mountains and plundered the occupants of the land of their forefathers. Those who migrated southwards fled from island to island, and despised relics of the race still inhabit different lands; not hewers of wood or drawers of water for subsequent conquerors, but dependent upon the casual bounties of nature. In Australia they marched free from molestation. The mode in which they spread over the continent may be easily surmised. They relied only on the chase, and on seeds or fruits provided by nature. As the number of a tribe increased it was found desirable to seek new homes. Family after family, treasuring as best it could the traditions of its ancestry, wandered along the shore so bountiful in food for skilful sportsmen. Probably there were several points of departure on the wide expanse of the north coast whither more boats than one would drift or be propelled.
Thus from the north would the east and west coasts be gradually peopled. Spreading along the east coast, so rich with the food they loved, tribe after tribe would be formed, until the south coast, and in time South Australia, would ​be reached, unless, before such migrations had extended thither, some families had traversed the continent by another path, and preoccupied the land. Rivers would be ascended, and their watersheds would become the hunting-ground of the first-comers. When the coast range was reached, if the country offered game in quantity the range would be crossed, and another watershed would gradually be occupied. Tribal feuds would interdict friendly intercourse, and differences of language would arise. In time the most barren and grudging wastes would know the foot of man, and he would extort from them the slender sustenance they afforded. To imagine that he could do so by the mere exercise of animal faculties is not only to under-rate his capacity, but to place in a contemptible light the numerous explorers, who with firearms, implements, and civilized appliances have shown their heroism and perished in explorations.
A strange fact puzzled all colonists as to tribal relations. The practice of circumcision was found to prevail in the north at the Gulf of Carpentaria, in the south at the east of St. Vincent's Gulf, round the head of the Great Australian Bight; and, according to Mr. J. Forrest, among the tribes to the east and north of a line drawn from Port Culver on the south coast by Mounts Ragged, Jeramungup, and the Wongon Hills, to the Geraldine mine on the Murchison river. Nowhere on the east coast was it in vogue, nor even in the territory of Port Phillip, nor anywhere between Port Phillip and Moreton Bay. Could it have sprung up independently in two places divided by the whole depth of the continent? The intervening tract was deemed impassable. Later years showed that it could easily be crossed when certain water supplies were known, and it is not hazardous to conclude that the tribes of South Australia are offshoots of ancestors who crossed the continent from north to south. Several tribes in the intervening interior were found to have preserved the custom of circumcision.
It is still difficult to explain why the rite, prevailing at the Gulf of Carpentaria, was not traditionally adhered to by ​ any tribes wandering? along the east or by all on the west coast, as well as by the traversers of the continent. It may be that it was in trot! need at the Gulf by fresh arrivals after the first peopling of the coast, and that the next hive thrown off by the new-comers, ascending the Leichhardt or some river flowing northwards, in process of time sent off later hives, which, crossing the tropic of Capricorn, reached the lower Barcoo or Cooper's Creek, Lake Torrens, and eventually the sonthern sea. A special migration may have carried the rite to those regions in Western Australia in which Mr, Forrest declares that it is preserved. The hostility between tribes would often keep them so much apart from one another that the practice of one might be unknown to, or rejected by, another. The melancholy quarrelsomeness of mankind which made Greek war against Greek in the palmiest day of intellectual development was exemplified in Australia. Almost every tribe was in a state of chronic antipathy, war, or watchful apprehension. Yet they had heralds wlm mo%^ed from tribe to tribe with impunity, and became conversant with the languages of their hosts.
Isolation brought about changes in dialects. Sometimes for long distances a dialect prevailed with little change. Suddenly a difference appeared. As a rule the sea-coast tribes were ignorant of the language spoken in the interior. Their ancestors had clung to the sea-shore, which furnished peculiar food. Some fresh hive, which found the ground occupied on each side of it, would make the rare experiment of going inland. Its ramifications in a hundred generations would creep from one river system to another, until all the tributaries of the Barcoo, the Darling, and the Murray would be occupied. Occasionally an advancing band would encounter one coming from another point of departure, and each would treat the other as a deadly foe. Between the language of adjacent tribes there would then be a wide gulf, and glibly would colonists sometimes a%'er that the mutual ignorance was a proof of irretrievable incapacity in the race. Yet the language thus contemned had its inflections, its suffixes, and its dual numbers. As there was no "s" in the language it was free from unpleasant hissing, and was as ​ musical as any European tongue. Those who spoke it might for loyalty to their laws and mutual kindness to one another put to the blush the best of their detractors. It has been objected that ignorance of the meaning of some songs they sang proved a low order of intelligence. Yet in Europe thousands flock to operatic performances of which, if they could distinguish, they would not understand the words. New songs amongst the Australians with appropriate dances, were to them like the last composition of Mozart or Rossini to Europeans. The perfection of acting was aimed at by each man in the tribe. Woe betide the unlucky wight who committed a mistake in the public performance, or missed the proper turn in the air while singing by his camp-fire. Humiliation followed him for weeks from the good-humoured taunts of the tribe. The words of the songs or chants were few, but were often repeated as the harmony ran its round. The performance of the dances (or, as they were called in Sydney "corobborrees," whence the name became general amongst whites and blacks) was invested with traditionary interest amounting to a cult. The composer who could minister to it was an especial favourite with his tribe, and of great repute abroad. The usual pictorial representation of a corrobboree shows the natives with legs extended, with white lines painted on them. But no painting can portray the intensity and rapidity of the movement communicated to these lines, while, without letting the sole of his foot leave the ground, the dancer by the same motion gradually passed laterally over the ground, and caused the muscles on his thigh to quiver. Mr. Eyre remarks that this is "a peculiarity probably confined to the natives of Australia." Some of them excelled others in its performance. The women beat ​time on folded skins at corrobborees. They sometimes danced for amusement separately. Their dance was peculiar to themselves.
When a tribe accepted a new performance, its members made themselves perfect as soon as possible. At the first united rendering of the intricacies of the dance (usually performed some time after sunset) there were generally friendly natives from another tribe, and if they were gratified the new piece was conned carefully, and in due time re-enacted by neighbouring tribes. A careful observer noticed that the time occupied in transmitting a composition from Port Stephens in New South Wales to Seymour in Victoria, a distance of 700 miles, was three years. After traversing a hundred miles the language was unknown to the singers, for the song travelled overland, and the tribes of the interior spoke a different dialect from that of Port Stephens.
The great Kamilaroi dialect of Liverpool Plains and tributaries of the Darling differed much from that of the eastern coast. One noteworthy fact was the manner in which tribes speaking the same dialect were designated amongst the Australians. Almost invariably they were denoted by the word they used for "no." Thus Kamil was the negative. The termination signified that they were the persons using it, and the dialect became known under the same term, Kamilaroi. Wiradhuri (Mr. Ridley's spelling) were the persons using Wirräi as their negative, throughout a large tract on the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers and adjacent territory. Numerous instances could be adduced. Rarely the affirmative particle was the ground of the name; and thus was found in Australia a repetition of the form of designation resorted to by the successors of Greek and Roman colonists in Provence.
The South Australian explorer, J. McDouall Stuart, recorded that near the centre of the continent an old native made a Masonic sign to him in 1860. When younger men repeated the sign, the astonished Stuart returned it, and the old man patted him in a friendly manner.
The people, thus scattered over their vast home, lived almost entirely on the fruits of the chase. They ate some seeds and roots, but did not cultivate, and they tamed no ​ animal but the dog of the forest. Flat stones to pound the gathered seeds were in use both in Western Australia, Victoria, and other places far removed from them. They could supply their needs, but they were sometimes indolent in doing so. Their stone hatchets were like those found in Europe. They were not perforated, but the handle was secured to them by various devices. To sharpen them gave toil for months. The tribes flourished best and were larger, and individuals amongst them were finer, where game was most abundant, or fish in sea or river furnished wholesome change of diet. In the most barren tracks they have been seen reduced to the verge of starvation, and under such trials the race would dwindle. But the opossum seldom failed them. It was almost as ubiquitous as themselves. Before white men disturbed the hunting-grounds the natives had no difficulty in procuring food.
From whatever quarter of the world they imported their ceremonial law, their intricate system of family distinctions, and their laws of food, they implicitly obeyed them throughout the continent. Their oneness of origin could not be doubted. The variations were but matters of detail, due to accidents. They did not tattoo like the Pacific islanders. They never marred the face, but raised with great care cicatrices which ridged their bodies. The scars, borne with pride in chosen pattern, were different on the men from those on the women. Every man had a family or class name, and could not marry a woman of that designation. Betrothals were early made, and always subject to the family distinctions. It may be doubted whether a girl ever attained the age of seven without having been betrothed within her tribe, in subjection to its marriage laws. The death of the husband transferred his widows to his brother of the same class-name. The children inherited the class-name of the mother. The name by which men and women were addressed was not the class, but an individual, name. The distinguishing class-names varied in different districts, but the system was the same. The individual name was frequently given with reference to the ​ place of birth, and every stream or hillock had its name well known to all the tribe. The principal stars had names, and by the position of the Pleiades the approach of summer was known. The territory was that of the tribe, but subject to this paramount right, families were specially recognised as having peculiar attachments to certain tracts. As there was no cultivation, there was no jealousy as to boundaries, except between tribes. The decisions of the tribe were made by common consent after discussion amongst the older warriors.
There were chiefs, and their office was sometimes hereditary if the successor was wise and valiant. Otherwise he fell into the ranks. The tribes were glad to be led or advised by accredited sagacity, but there was no arbitrary prerogative. Where there was a leader he was rather primus inter pares than autocratic. On all occasions of difficulty the tribe consulted together, and the decision of the elders was final. The chieftain, if there happened to be one, accepted it implicitly. It was always given in absolute conformity to the traditions and ceremonies of the tribe, which no one thought of disobeying or changing, and of which the elders were the expounders.
Old age swept the decrepit out of consideration. They became mere hangers-on of the tribe, fed by the next-of-kin. Sometimes it is affirmed that they were abandoned as useless or superfluously lagging on the stage. The author has known no instance, but would not deny that it has occurred. He knew an instance of continued veneration for an aged warrior, and saw him buried reverently.
Amongst the laws expounded was one by which injuries were to be avenged or expiated. A culprit had sometimes to fight, and sometimes to stand at a certain distance to encounter spears hurled at him by the aggrieved. The sentence was never resisted.
It was only by slow degrees that the young man became free to eat of all the game in the forest. Not until he had ​ been formally received as a young man of the tribe by the rite of initiation could he venture to touch the kangaroo, emu, or other specified animals. Hunting was the pride of life. The throwing-stick or wommerah added enormously to the force with which the spear could be thrown, and the boomerang was dangerous in war, and useful in procuring birds. The war-boomerang and the boomerang thrown at game went straight to their mark, rotating rapidly. The returning boomerang was a plaything. It has been found nowhere else than in Australia. Sir George Grey vividly ​described the use of the spear. The grey rock of the mountain was not more moveless than the hunter when, in approaching his game, he paused like a statue, while the innocent kangaroo vainly sought to detect an invader. Then when, reassured, the quarry relapsed into unwatchfulness, the spearman, keenly eyeing it, and never moving muscle when the kangaroo glanced towards him, advanced until near enough to launch his spear, which, hurled from the wommerah, pierced through the body of the victim. Without the wommerah the heavy spear was fatal, but at a less distance.
Birds were snared by similar stealthy advance with a bough held before the body. Placing grass or weeds on his head, and swimming noiselessly towards wild ducks, an expert native, with long wand and noose, would snare and secure more than one before the rest would take alarm.
Of the various forms of boomerang, some were made solely for throwing point-blank at birds or beasts. Others were weapons of war, such as only the strong could use. ​Some were mere playthings. The one which travellers delighted to see circling in the air and returning in waving circles to the thrower was made only for amusement, but the traveller often supposed that the implement was made to return to its owner in case of missing its object in battle; and thus an absurd error was received in England as truth.
The rapidity of rotation of all boomerangs made their blow sharp, and the weight and velocity of war-boomerangs made them dangerous. The boomerang made to return to the thrower was thrown with the hollow of the are forward, and with great force, at an angle varying from 45 degs. upwards, from the shoulder of the thrower, according to its special construction and gravity; and the pressure of the air against its outer or flattest side insured its correct flight. No less than six lateral warps, and two shapings with the tomahawk at the ends, were comprised in the plaything. The thrower could cause it to strike the ground about fifteen yards from him, and then rise and pursue its returning course, though not so fast or far as when thrown in the normal manner. If it struck a tree the toy-boomerang was almost always shattered, and the Australians abstained from throwing it where trees were near. It was in open spaces thrown at wild ducks if it happened to be the only missile at hand; but as it would only travel in its circuit, it had only one possible point of intersection with the flight of the birds; whereas the weapons made for the purpose pursued them.
The boomerang of war was massive compared to the toy, and carefully constructed with warps peculiar to itself so as to insure its forward progress, ricochetting as it went at every contact with the ground until the great force communicated to it by the thrower was spent. Some were so heavy that only a powerful man could throw them well. The war-boomerang required less skill in construction than the toy, but when only stone hatchets were used, much labour was required in fashioning it. Its lateral warpings, which a careless observer might fail to detect, differed altogether from those of the toy-boomerang.
The Sydney Gazette of 1804 records that, at a battle among the natives, Bungaree, "distinguished by his remark​able courtesy," threw a war-boomerang with such force that, striking at some distance "the right arm of one of his opponents, it actually rebounded to a distance of not less than seventy or eighty yards, leaving a horrible contusion behind, and exciting universal admiration." The author has known a war-boomerang break a man's arm, and at the same time inflict upon his body a blow from which he died.
The flight and forward bounding of the massive war-boomerang, thrown by a strong and expert arm, was as dangerous as it seemed marvellous. Rotating with a velocity which hurtled in the air, it was made to strike the ground in front of the object, and, unimpeded in rotation by the touch, to bound onwards. Any slight inequality of surface of the ground elevated or deflected it, and thus the enemy could not know beforehand what part of his body to guard; whereas the spear, which held one course, was easily avoided by the keen eye which saw it thrown. Various light instruments made for direct flight in the air by careful shaping and warping, were in use. A few boys stealing towards wild-fowl, and throwing their weapons at the rising birds, seldom failed to secure several, for no flight could elude the rotatory missiles.
Clubs of various shapes, wooden shields, some narrow and angular to ward off club blows, some broad to receive spears, were used in battle. They were ornamented with lines carved skilfully in patterns. The spears were various. Some were of heavy wood throughout; some of light wood, with hard points neatly spliced and gummed to them. Some were of reed, and some (most common where the grass-tree, or xanthorrea, grew) were made of its shaft, with hard, sometimes barbed, points attached. The reed and grass-tree spears were thrown with the wommerah, a tough implement generally less than three feet long, with a small piece of wood fastened to its end at an acute angle. This fitted into a socket (secured by twine and gum) at the end of the spear behind the thrower, who, grasping the other end of the wommerah, and holding the spear over and ​ parallel to it with one hand, obtained the leverage afforded by the length of the wommerah, and hurled the spear with a force of which, without such aid, no human strength was capable. A reed spear could easily be thrown more than two hundred yards.
In 1805 Tipahe, a New Zealand chief, was present at a native battle near Sydney. He despised the dilatoriness of the warriors, but greatly admired the wommerah with which the spear was thrown, and but for the superior destructiveness of firearms would have introduced it in his own country. There was seldom much life lost in battle. The clubs of the losing party were dangerous to pursuers, who were usually content with victory. The women, though treated as chattels, warmly espoused tribal and other quarrels. Their shrieks of taunt or triumph were ever ready. The incidents most fatal to life were those attendant upon a raid of an armed band, unaccompanied by women, stealing upon an unsuspecting camp and spearing several men before dashing forward to complete their work, which spared only women captured as wives.
To describe the whole life of the Australians would need a large volume, but a few instances of their craft may be told. In climbing trees none could excel them. It was by mechanical aid that they overcame their greatest difficulties. With the stone tomahawk (promptly abandoned for iron when the colonists arrived) the hunter cut horizontal notches on which to plant his toe, while perpendicular incisions gave a hold to his fingers as he ascended tall trees. The dangerous crisis was in passing the place where the trunk terminated and large limbs branched out. The descent was more difficult than the ascent, for the notches were unseen as they were felt for. On the coast, and in thick forests where vines abounded, another plan was sometimes resorted to. A strong piece of vine, pliant like rope, was cut, and passed round the tree. Holding the ends, and leaning back with foot firmly planted against the trunk, alternately stepping upwards, and jerking the vine higher and higher, the native quickly walked to the point of danger, the expanding limbs, where the utmost care was required. Passing that difficulty, and leaving the vine for nse in the descent, he drew his tomahawk from his belt (of ​twine of opossum fur, wound round his body) and sought the branch in which lay the opossum or flying squirrel, whose traces he had detected on the bark of the tree.
The wild dog had been tamed, and assisted in catching small game, such as kangaroo rats, bandicoots, &c. Birds' nests were an easy prey, and eggs or nestlings furnished food. For fishing there were nets, weirs, and spears. Often men would dive and spear fish under deep water clear enough to permit sight. Eel-spears had several prong-points. Governor Phillip found the natives at Port Jackson using fish-hooks made out of oyster-shells. A weed (a polygonum) which commonly grew near water was plucked, thrown in masses on the fire, submerged steaming in a pool, and had the effect of stupefying the fish, which, coming to the surface in that condition, were secured without trouble. In one part of Central Australia the leaves and twigs of a shrub called pidgery, or pituri, were dried, preserved in closely-woven bags, and bartered with other tribes. A small quantity had an exhilarating effect, and pidgery was highly prized. Sometimes weapons were bartered. Grass-tree, of the kind fit for spears, grew only in certain places, and the spears were exchanged with friendly tribes for boomerangs or clubs. Grubs found in trees or amongst rocks, gum, manna, iguanas, snakes, roots of many kinds, frogs, mushrooms, nuts, berries, seeds, and all four-footed or two-footed creatures, fell a prey. But no native would eat a snake which had not to his knowledge been prevented from biting itself in its agonies. Immediate suction was the remedy resorted to for a snake-bite. If alone, and bitten on a part to which he could not apply his own mouth, the sufferer on joining his friends, stoically died, deprecating useless attempts to contend with the inevitable.
On approaching a river which they wished to cross with bag and baggage, one or two men would detach themselves from the main band, select a tree from which to strip a sheet of bark, shape the bark, and carry it to the river. There it served as a canoe in which to transport the whole company by degrees. There was no accomplishment which more surprised, or was more useful to the Europeans, than the skill with which Australians tracked animals or men. Sir John Lubbock cites with admiration an incident ​recorded by Mr. Gideon S. Lang, who saw a native detect, without alighting from his horse, the name of the person whose footprint was on the road. Such occurrences were common. It was on the rock, the scanty lichen, or hard and barren places, that the tracker made his white companions wonder.
The reputation of courage and skill in war was the chief object of ambition. The pre-eminent man usually took several wives. Wives were sometimes given away. The husband had unrestrained power over them and his children. The women were drudges in the tribe; they carried burdens. They were at best treated with contemptuous kindness, and often brutally. The husband was a law to himself; but there were instances of affection which redeemed human nature from the cruelty of the system. Children were generally treated kindly, but sometimes were put to death in early infancy to shake off useless burdens. Cannibalism was known in some tribes, but was abhorred in others. When resorted to, it was with secrecy and mysterious eagerness, as if the appetite were sharpened by a superstition as to supernatural results. It was sometimes unjustly imputed, when white men, driving the natives from their camps, found human hands preserved in nets. They were thought to be morsels for food, but they were the trophies of success, carried by the Australian as the scalp of his enemy was carried by the Cherokee. Custom varied so much in different tribes that a hand was carried as a memorial of a lost friend in some places.
Burial ceremonies differed in various districts. In some places graves were carefully dug with sticks; the body, wrapped at full length in bark of the melaleuca, was, amidst wailings and cutting of flesh by the women, buried with the property of the deceased. At other places bodies were interred in different postures. Some tribes exposed their dead on small trees, on which they had made a platform for the purpose. Some constructed a low platform, supported by stakes and forked branches. Some placed the body in the hollow of a tree, some in a cave. The mourning for a chieftain or distinguished warrior was intense and prolonged. For the young or undistinguished little display of grief was evinced, and sometimes there was utter indiffer​ence. The suit of woe was, as in China, white, pipe-clay being daubed over the body, not in the grotesque and waving lines used in equipment for dance or war, but in large unsightly masses.
When death took place there was often suspicion of sorcery in a neighbouring tribe, and the karadgy, or leech and sorcerer, of the tribe of the deceased was called upon to divine the cause, and point out the quarter whence it came. In Western Australia the sorcerer (or boylya) watched the fumes arising from leaves and twigs thrown into a grave prepared for the deceased, and was deemed capable of seeing, although hidden from common eyes, the way in which the aroused evil spirit would wing its flight. It would go to the quarter whence the offence had come. War and reprisal would ensue with the tribe which lived in that direction. In South Australia the body was opened, and, on examination of the entrails and omentum, it was decided whether foul play had been used. Sometimes the wise men received intimations without these practices, but the witenagemote had always to determine what steps should be taken to avenge the death. Revenge was a sacred duty.
The raising of ridges on the skin, prevalent in many tribes, was unpractised in others. As the man became a warrior he added to his adornments. The women also had their peculiar marks, but it does not appear that they were compelled to be scarred. The men were proud of scars which indicated hardihood. The face was never disfigured.
Many travellers were astonished to find in caves figures of men and of animals vividly painted with some art and great care. On the sides of rocks heads and hands of gigantic size have been often seen. Governor Phillip wrote (May, 1788) that he saw figures of men, "shields, and fish roughly cut on the rocks, and on the top of a mountain I saw the figure of a man in the attitude they put themselves in when they are going to dance, which was much better done than I had seen before, and the figure of a large lizard was sufficiently well done to satisfy everyone what animal was meant. Flinders described these paintings on rock, which he saw on Chasm Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Subsequent explorers, Allan Cunningham, Captain Grey, ​ and others, observed them at other places. They appear to have been more numerous on the northern and western coasts than elsewhere, but to have been elaborated with greater care at a distance from the shore than close to it.
The rite of induction of young men has been alluded to as witnessed by Phillip's officers in Sydney. There, as in districts far northward, and as in some of the tribes in South Australia, the outward sign testifying the admission was the loss of a tooth. A place was set apart for the ceremony, and seldom changed. Women and children never visited it. The occupation of it by white men confounded the natives as much as the destruction of St. Peter's or Notre Dame would astound Romans or Frenchmen. A raised oval or circular ridge inclosed a space of about eight hundred superficial feet. It had but one inlet, though the mound was but a foot in height. Another sacred symbol was a mounded cross, made similarly of earth. All around the space were trees whose bark was graved with marks and patterns of winding lines, or of angular figures enclosed one within another. Strange dances were exhibited, which in various order signified that in the chase and in war the young men were to assume new functions. The dog, the kangaroo, the hostile tribe, were to be subject to their prowess. Strange articles were shown and songs were taught which no woman or child could see or hear. Even a special call (or cooey), with its response was taught, to be used only out of hearing of the uninitiated. Seated on the shoulders of one man, the boy submitted to the operation by which his tooth was knocked out by a blow from a stone on an instrument applied to the tooth.
Usually the young men spent some subsequent weeks in the mountains apart from the general tribe under the tutelage of esteemed warriors, perfected their memories as to the rites they had witnessed, and gave assurance of observing secrecy. The loss of the front teeth was noticed by Dampier in 1699, and by Flinders in the present century, in tribes where circumcision was practised. But on the east coast the first ceremony existed, and the latter was unknown. Many tribes of the interior and on the south and west coasts adopted neither practice, but all had cere​monies by which they formally received the young as members of the body politic.
The origin of the practice of "knocking out the tooth" could not be explained by the performers. They did it because their fathers did it. It was one of those remnants of a religious cult of which the form was preserved when the spirit had waned from remembrance.
From the ceremony of initiation Europeans were carefully excluded in Australia, except in those rare instances in which they had won the confidence of a tribe; and the fact that Phillip's officers were permitted to see the ceremony described by Collins, proves the tact of the governor.
The rite of admission to the Australian tribe did not confer privilege to eat all kinds of food. Stage by stage as he grew older the man acquired new rights. Women also were prevented from eating certain animals, so that the objects reserved became the exclusive spoil of men in matured strength in a position of authority. In mere infancy the child might partake of any food given to it. Disabilities took effect after about nine or ten years. The food was always cooked, by broiling, or by baking in hot ashes, or in an excavated oven lined with stones. No vessels were used for boiling water, and the art of pottery was unknown.
Among the objects never shown to women or to children was a magic stone—a transparent crystal of quartz like, but smaller than, the mysterious stone which Dr. Dee traded with in England and Europe in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Carefully wrapped in a ball of twine of opossum fur, a notable crystal was deemed a talisman, and sometimes sent from tribe to tribe to work its marvels. The missionary Threlkeld records that he was mysteriously shown one (there called murramai) which was sent to Brisbane Water (a short distance north of Sydney) from Moreton Bay. In South-Western Australia the same veneration was felt for it, but the name was there teyl. Death was the sentence on any one who showed the murramai to a native woman, and a grim comment on the "conflict of laws" was furnished in the Hunter River district, when a white man, having, in spite of remonstrance, broken the native law, was killed by a native delegated by the tribe to do the deed, and the slayer ​ himself was captured, and in turn destroyed at the hands of an English hangman.
​ This general description of the habits of the race must suffice for these pages.
In the excellent "Kamilaroi and other Australian Languages," by the Rev. William Ridley, will be found most valuable information, not unattended with internal proof of the vague, second-hand manner in which knowledge has been sometimes assumed to have been gathered. The "Australian Aborigines," by James Dawson, must be commended for its fulness and general accuracy.
The former life of the scattered tribes of Australia quickly became impossible after settlers appeared in any district. The new comers, for the most part as ignorant of the manners and laws of the disinherited race as any unmoved denizen of Wapping, were ready to denounce it as an encumbering tree which ought to be cut down without delay or remorse. Not making allowances for the forced impossibility of living their former life, and the powerful obstacles to their adoption of a new one, the public soon accepted the local maxim that the Australian black was the lowest type of man. It is but just to show some of the influences which tended to crush him.
It was common among the settlers to attract or inveigle into their service some young lad who was able to run errands or to ride. He still associated with his tribe when they frequented the neighbourhood of the settler's house. He knew his native language; he venerated native traditions. He was duly initiated in the mysteries, and, having been long betrothed, when he reverted to his tribe as he grew to manhood, he was denounced as another proof of the incorrigibility of his race. An instance may be told.
Sir George Grey tells of one Miago taken on board H.M.S. Beagle, and found attentive, clean, and cheerful, wearing European dress and waiting at the gun-room mess. The Beagle left him at Swan River, and he became again a savage, wearing war-paint, and inbruing his hands in blood.
"Several persons told me," continues Sir G. Grey. "You see the taste for a savage life was strong in him, and he took to the bush again directly. ​Let us pause for a moment and consider. Miago when he was landed had amongst the white people none who would be truly friends of his; they would give him scraps from their table, but the very outcasts of the whites would not have treated him as an equal; they had no sympathy with him; he could not have married a white woman, he had no certain means of subsistence open to him, he never could have been either a husband or a father if he had lived apart from his own people. Where amongst the whites was he to find one who would have filled for him the place of his black mother, whom he is much attached to? What white man would have been his brother? What white woman his sister? He had two courses open to him: he could either have renounced all natural ties and have led a hopeless, joyless life amongst the whites, ever a servant, ever an inferior being: or he could renounce civilization and return to the friends of his childhood and to the habits of his youth. He chose the latter course, and I think that I should have done the same.
The absolute submission of the individual to the will of the tribe left Miago no other course. But those who imputed to him inborn, untameable savagery have been confuted by the result in every case in which the black child has by accident been taken from the tribe before it had been able to learn the language and traditions of the people.
An infant whose parents were shot at Toongabbe in the last century, another who was permitted at the Hunter River to be suckled by a white woman whose child had died, and who when the foster-child grew would not part with it to its mother; these and many similar instances proved that it was the hold of native language and tradition which was too powerful to be broken. The two instances cited were accompanied by a feeling of repugnance to being deemed members of the race which was daily, by ravages of drink and disease, undergoing degradation before the eyes of the changelings.
Mr. Eyre says—
"The character of the Australian natives is frank, open, and confiding.In a short intercourse they are easily made friends, and when such terms are once established, they associate with strangers with a freedom and fearlessness that would give little countenance to the impression so ​generally entertained of their treachery. On many occasions where I have met these wanderers in the wilds far removed from the abodes of civilization, and when I have been accompanied by a single native boy, I have been received by them in the kindest and most friendly manner. I have ever found them of a lively, cheerful disposition, patiently putting up with inconveniences and privations, and never losing that natural good temper which so strongly characterizes them. . . . It is a mistaken idea, as well as an unjust one, that supposes the natives to be without sensibility of feeling. A fine intelligent young boy was by his father's consent living with me at the Murray for many weeks."
The old man took the son to Adelaide, where the lad died.
"For nearly a year I never saw anything more of the father, although he occasionally had been within a few miles of my neighbourhood. One day I accidentally fell in with him. Upon seeing me he immediately burst into tears, and was unable to speak. It was the first time he had met me since his son's death, and my presence forcibly reminded him of his loss."
The same grief mastered him when he went to Eyre's house. The name of a lost friend is never mentioned by the natives, and when they have heard it from unthinking or rude lips they have been known to go away silently in tears.
It is just to add that Eyre depicts, like other writers, the brutal treatment of women, the occasional licentiousness in manners, and the absence of respect for chastity which prevailed.
Count Strzelecki, who had wandered in many lands, travelled and observed much in Australia. He found analogies between the skulls of Europeans and natives.
"In many instances it was even remarked that the facial angle of the white was more acute, the superciliary ridge, the centres of ossification of the frontal bone, and the ridge of the occipital one more developed, and the inferior maxillary more widely expanded, than in the skulls of the aborigines. Yet, notwithstanding a partial inferiority in shape in some of the details, the native of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land possesses on the whole a well-proportioned frame. His limbs, less fleshy and massive than those of a well-formed African, exhibit all the symmetry and peculiarly well-defined muscular development and well-knit articulations and roundness which characterize the negro; hence, compared with the latter, he is swifter in his movements and more graceful. . . . When beheld in the posture of striking, or throwing his spear, his attitude leaves nothing to be desired in point of manly grace."
One obstacle to obtaining information as to Australian ideas of the supernatural was the fact that they were closely bound up with the tribal ceremonies, of which women and children were allowed to know nothing, and of which none ​would speak to any European except to the few who were implicitly trusted.
In November 1882 Mr. James Manning read to the Royal Society of New South Wales an elaborate paper, embodying information which he had procured in frequent conversations in 1844 with a native whose confidence he had obtained. The accurate narrative given to Mr. Manning about the ceremonies with which young men are initiated, and the injunction of secrecy, are corroborative testimonies to the genuineness of his paper. Differences between customs of tribes make it probable that the tradition intrusted to Mr. Manning would not have found an exact counterpart in any remote locality; but the great fact of belief in a Creator and Ruler was perhaps common in all.
The Rev. Mr. Gunther, who was for many years a missionary at Wellington Valley, far from the scene of Mr. Manning's inquiries near the Murrumbidgee River, received from the most aged natives assurances that their people firmly believed in a creative and all-powerful Deity, and the name ascribed to him was there almost the same as that which prevailed among tribes speaking diverse dialects.
There have been many disquisitions as to religious belief among the Australians. Count Strzelecki came to the conclusion that they recognised a God, believed in an immortality of everlasting enjoyment among the stars, and reserved their fears for an evil spirit, indicating them by mysterious belief in omens. That they believed in an informing soul in their own bodies, was the result of inquiry in all parts of the continent.
Sir George Grey ascribed no religious faith to them, but described their superstitious observances.
The Rev. Mr. Ridley, after years of intelligent labour and study, wrote:—"Their tradition concerning Baiame, the ​ Maker of All, as a ray of true light which has passed down through many generations, may well suggest to their Christian fellow-countrymen, that this branch of the family of man has been from the beginning an object of our Heavenly Father's preserving mercy."
It would be presumptuous in any one observer to pronounce dogmatically on such a subject. But long acquaintance with the perishing race, and frequent conversations with them on their mysteries, lead the author to believe that Mr. Ridley was right—that waning tradition of the Creator survived more or less in memory, and that the rites and ceremonies preserved amongst the Australians were the relics of a cult carried to the continent by the ancestors of the nomads who were roaming over it when the English took possession.
By ordinary observers who never sought to penetrate the inner mind of the race they were deemed absolutely without religious ideas, but their dread of evil spirits was recognized. Without doubt much of the religious belief held by the first voyagers from the Arafura Sea was dissipated in the course of ages of dispersion. That the race was of one origin is capable of proof by language and many ceremonies. That those ceremonies were remnants of the ritual of the decayed religion can hardly be doubted. Nor are the Australians the only instance in which incrustations of forms have been allowed to stifle the essence of religion among men. The vine, which in their native woods climbs over and eventually strangles the life of a tree, and stands proudly in its stead, is a fit emblem of the Australian
​condition. Of prayer no relic remained. Yet there was left a consciousness of a Great Creator, undefined, unapproached by man. The astronomer does not bring down the spheres, but attunes his mind to their harmonies; and the golden link of prayer binds man to the ineffable power which created him. Without it he becomes rudderless on the ocean. When wholesome humility dies out in the mind, unclean spirits fill the void. And so, with the Australian, the relics of worship, retained in his solemn ceremonies, did not bar the way to base superstitions and dread. The darkness of night, the deep recesses of unfathomed pools, the neighbourhood of dense woods which defied the beams of the sun, were all believed to be under the power of some evil one. Yet was the belief vague. No native would voluntarily go alone at night to a haunted region. But when the tribe thought fit to move at night, it did so; and if pressing danger urged him, even a single man would thread his unerring way in the murkiest recesses from which otherwise he would have shrunk.
For years the colonists strove to gain sight of a water-monster described to them by the natives. It dwelt in deep river or mountain pools. Doubtless traditions of dangers from the crocodile, or shark, spread among tribes which knew not the northern rivers, or the sea, invested any deep water with a reputation for containing its monster; and the distorted fancy was thus founded on reality.
One great difficulty in weighing the peculiarities of the Australian race was the diversity of customs in different tribes. The habits of one tribe have often been accepted as the rule of all, and a local observer has built a general theory upon an exception. Thus in some tribes in South Australia cannibalism was a rite. Mr. Gason reported that the Dieyerie tribe (near Lake Hope) were bound to eat a portion of their relations in obedience to a code under which the mother ate her children, or the children the mother, but the father and his children were forbidden to partake of a similar horrible repast, while "uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, grandfathers, and ​grandmothers ate of each other." The tradition was that the rite was ordained in order to prevent inordinate grief at the death of relations.
The South Australian Folk-Lore" (Taplin), published by the Government (1879), declared that the Narrinyerri tribes, which occupied the territory around Lake Alexandrina (extending from Cape Jervis to Lacepede Bay), shrank with horror from cannibalism of any kind. The Narrinyerri were in some respects esteemed as having a more highly-formed social polity than other tribes in the colony. They are distinctly affirmed to have believed in a future state, and in a ruling Deity. They had numerous totems (derived, as usual in Australia, from names of animals), and marriages could only take place amongst them in strict compliance with defined law or custom, which prescribed the classes within which marriages were allowable. Contrary to the ordinary custom of the continent, the child was of the father's class. This exception occurred also amongst the Kurnai tribes, which occupied Gipps Land, in Victoria, as well as in some other parts of the continent. The Kurnai tribes were made the subject of elaborate comment by Mr. A. W. Howitt in 1880. He became acquainted with them long after seizure of their country by Europeans had annihilated their organization, and when remnants of them were gathered at two mission stations maintained by aid from the government, and by the zeal of missionaries. The elder members doubtless retained knowledge of their smitten institutions, but reverence for what was once supreme law is impaired by its ​ destruction or decay, and the study of lifeless relics is more difficult than that of living forms.
As the work which includes Mr. Howitt's monograph is one of the most recent which deals with Australian customs, it is necessary to allude briefly to one or two points on which he dwells. He and his fellow-worker (Mr. Fison) in the "Kamilaroi and Kurnai" have expended much pains in an attempt to prove that the Australian customs confirm the theory that man evolved from a brutal state the differences which now distinguish him from brutes. This is not the place in which to deal with the general question whether the Creator gave to man reason and speech when He placed him upon the earth. On that question elaborate works exist in many languages; and some axioms have been laid down which experience does not confirm. "Speech," said Humboldt, "is the necessary condition of the thought of the individual." Yet a deaf mute Australian was, within the author's own knowledge, expert in all the arts necessary to his condition. If set down wheresoever the want of water would not cause speedy death from thirst, he could wrest ample living from the land in a manner which would have astonished learned linguists. But he had learned wisdom from his tribe. He had caught, in the words of Max Müller, "something of the rational behaviour of his neighbours," by whom he was called "the stupid one." But without passing that Rubicon of language which Max Müller declares no brutes can cross, he was far removed from their sphere. There seems no need, and no justification, for putting forward the Australian as autochthonous, and progressive to the state in which he was found in the eighteenth century.
There are problems in Europe which might better engage the attention of those who think that man evolves his own faculties. Ample literary evidence is at hand, and yet those problems are not solved in the sense demanded by believers in the capability of men to augment their mental powers. None will dare to assert that since the days of ​ Socrates and the master spirits of his time the human mind has advanced. Shakspeare and a few others comfort us with the thought that it has not retrograded, but no other land can show the flood of light that shone in Greece, when her scanty freemen raised painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and philosophy to heights perpetually aimed at, seldom reached, and never surpassed. Leaving as beyond discussion in these pages the unspeakable blessings conferred upon man by Christianity, the world has little to show except in mechanical contrivances and discoveries, flowing from the inductive system. Recorded gains indeed are never lost. Material advantages are innumerable, but mental transformation, by way of heightened faculty, no one will venture to claim as the result of man's exertions. The bare idea of John Stuart Mill confronted by the easy superiority of Socrates would drive such a thought from the most boastful.
Mr. Howitt, reflecting on the condition of a group of persons all connected by blood, has evolved a theory that originally "brothers had their wives in common, or a group of sisters their husbands in common," and that from this promiscuous intercourse the savage mind engendered an elaborate code which made such intercourse impossible. It was common to many Australian tribes to have a comprehensive term which included many relations. Thus a father's brother's child and a mother's sister's child on the River Peake in South Australia bore the same relative term to their cousin. At Lake Alexandrina, in the same colony, the cousin bore one appellation if male, and another if female. As there were terms to comprehend a grandfather's or grandmother's brothers and sisters, and as every living relation bore a significant term reciprocated by another, the ​ acquisition of the terms which flowed trippingly from the tongues of the natives became difficult for Europeans. The Rev. G. Taplin (editor of the "South Australian Folk-Lore") exclaimed that is was "remarkable how precisely the Australians designate relationships for which we have no distinctive name."
Bearing this fact in mind, and knowing that though handed down only by oral tradition the tribal laws were implicitly obeyed, let the reader observe the accompanying tree, or intra-tribal marriage code, recorded by the good Roman Catholic missionary, Bishop Salvado, in Western Australia. It is selected, not as the most complicated, but as one of the simplest recorded. It may be asked whether, as some such code exists throughout the continent, it does not carry conviction with it that the tribes brought their polity from afar. That they did so, and that local changes were sometimes effected, is more easy to believe than that a homogeneous system was excogitated by hundreds of tribes independently throughout the continent.
A glance at this tree, and a knowledge that generally children were betrothed to members of the permitted totems within the tribe at an early age by their parents, will show how little dependence can be placed upon the following statement in a work published by the Government of Victoria in 1878: "A tribe is in fact an enlargement of a family circle, and none within it can intermarry. A man must get a wife from a neighbouring tribe either by consent, or by barter, or by theft." A more erroneous statement could hardly be made, though it is contained in an elaborate Introduction by the editor who probably was misled by reading that marriages were exogamous as to the totem, and imagined that they were exogamous as to the tribe. Doubtless there were marriages outside of the tribe, but they were exceptional luxuries; arising from conquest in a warlike raid, or, if two tribes were friendly, from barter.
MARRIAGE LAWS, NEW NORCIA, WESTERN AUSTRALIA.
would impair tradition. Yet in Gipps' Land none could marry a person of his own totem.
Differing in detail, the marriage laws of Australia are one in principle, and barred promiscuous intercourse or incest. Implicitly obeyed, and much too intricate to have been devised by a race defective in mental gifts, they either prove its capacity for legislation, or else that it imported its ceremonial law as other wanderers or conquerors have carried theirs within the range of authentic history.
To imagine that the Kurnai tribe invented a complicated system in order to relieve themselves from a difficulty in which it is gratuitously supposed that they were placed, is to invent a problem for the sake of a theory. No evidence is discoverable to warrant the setting aside the account given by the natives themselves. Their law was handed down from their forefathers, treasured unchanged, obeyed by all without demur, and no instance was known in which passion stirred a member of a tribe to defy the law by ​ marrying within a prohibited section. Can popes or kings allege an equal conformity to their codes?
The aborigines of Tasmania have been a stumbling-block to theorists. Their coarse, short hair differed from that of Australians; they had neither the marvellous boomerang nor the forceful wommerah: and yet unless they could be proved to have migrated from Australia, it seemed necessary to admit that they sprang from Tasmanian soil, and such an evolution seemed to imply that every island could generate its own race; in which case so many independent races and languages ought to have existed as would have defied computation, and were clearly incompatible with the proofs furnished by comparative philology. One learned writer surmised that the Tasmanians sailed or rowed round the continent; another rejected the theory because the skill in navigation required for such a feat could not have been subsequently lost. Others have deduced them from the Africans, and supposed that at one time land extended, and man roamed, from Australia to Madagascar.
Yet, different as to stature and hair, the islanders were in some points like the Australians. Like them they raised cicatrices to adorn their bodies. Like them they venerated stones of rock-crystal; like them they initiated young men in tribal mysteries; like them at those mysteries they used among other symbols which women and children might not see, an oblong piece of wood which, swung by a string in swift circles, caused a booming sound. At those mysteries also, on island and continent, there were observances which might seem derived from the Dionysiac orgies which had their counterpart in Hindostan, as well as among the islands of the Pacific, but were screened from the public gaze in Australia. Australian and Tasmanian men at their dances, by simultaneous hissing and rapid vibration of the lips, made a fierce sound, quite unlike the quivering roar produced by the Maoris in their war-dance.
There was no wild dog in Tasmania, but his presence on the mainland was easy to account for on the supposition that the wandering Malays, who frequented the northern coasts for many centuries, had left dogs on shore. On the other hand, the Thylacinus cynocephalus and the Sarcophilus ursinus, though both marsupial, were not found on the ​ continent. The islanders speedily obtained dogs after the arrival of the English in 1803.
Like the Australian, the Tasmanian natives shrank from naming their departed friends; and often, if the deceased person had borne the name of an animal, or tree, or locality, they invented a new word to describe the object.
No sound like that of the letter "s" was contained in either vocabulary.
Most observers remarked that there was no trace of religious usage in Tasmania, but a dread of evil spirits. But Clark, long a catechist among the natives herded at Flinders' Island after capture, testified that "the greater portion, but not all of them, believed that they were to live after the body died." It may be that, as in Australia, the relics of their religious cult were enshrined in the ceremonies which they observed. "If," said Father Clark (as the natives called him), "so few die joyfully blessing God, are they singular in that respect? The last words of one who died at Flinders' Island were, 'Lord Jesus Christ, come and take me to Thyself.' This was in the hearing of the greater portion of the people who are yet alive. He was a good man." Clark himself shed tears of joy when relating the happy deaths of some of his dark disciples. The race was therefore not incapable of religious impressions or of prayer.
Like their neighbours they believed in sorcery, and are said to have believed in necromancy, but there is no record of their traditions; nor can there ever be, for the last of them, Truganini, died in 1876. Some of the white invaders saw the whole race disappear, and fragments of ill-compiled vocabularies are all that remain to tell of a people which has passed away.
​ On the whole, it may be more easily credited that the race of the island once occupied the mainland and was driven southwards by more warlike or skilful tribes than that it separately invented similar traditions and observances. To float across Bass's Straits in a canoe might sometimes be hazardous, but in calm weather was easy. Many recorded instances of drifting canoes exceed by far the width of Bass's Straits. The so-called catamaran of Southern Tasmania, moreover, could not be filled with water nor upset.
To ascribe the habits of the islanders to chance when they conform to those of the continent would be a wild abandonment of reason, when the similarities are found to be abundant. To account for the dissimilarities is difficult; but on the supposition that frequently in the lapse of ages families would land on the northern coast of the continent, it is highly credible that the intermingling of fresh blood would produce physical differences, and thus the race on the continent might diverge in appearance from that which was isolated in the southern island. Thus also any invention, such as that of the boomerang or the wommeral, would remain unknown in the island, although it would be communicated gradually on the continent.
The number of the islanders at the date of British occupation has been computed at 7000, divided into about a score of tribes, estranged by warfare, and speaking four differing dialects. They roved from place to place within their tribal limits. Like their neighbours on the continent, when they sent out a war-party they composed it of men only. If they apprehended an attack, they sent their women and children to mountain recesses, and watched the object of dread. Thus for days an exploring party led by ​ Sir Thomas Mitchell, in Australia, was followed (within the author's knowledge from information in after years from the tribe) by an agile band whom he never saw, but who did not return to their families till he had quitted their domain.
The huts of the races were of the same temporary character, but it was observed that on the stormy west coast of Tasmania they were more substantial than elsewhere. On the south and west coasts, the island tribes used a catamaran of logs, or a bundle of buoyant bark bound together, but narrowing at the end. Cannibalism was rejected by them with horror. It is affirmed that in no instance did the Tasmanians perpetrate outrages upon women during the war of extermination. Funeral ceremonies varied. Sometimes there was burial; sometimes burning; sometimes the remains were placed in a hollow tree. Grief for a distinguished or beloved friend was, as on the continent, attended with the cutting of the face with flints and the melancholy wail of mourners. White was also the suit of woe for both races.
Mr. J. E. Calder, who had seen the Tasmanians in their degradation, and who compiled his account of them after reference to published and MS. authorities, thus described them:—"It has been customary to rank the Tasmanian savages with the most degraded of the human family, and possessed of inferior intelligence only. But facts quite disprove this idea, and show that they were naturally very intellectual, highly-susceptible of culture, and, above all, most desirous of receiving instruction, which is fatal to the dogma of their incapacity for civilization." To a question from Mr. Bonwick—whether they were capable of true civilization—Mr. Calder answered:—
"Yes, undoubtedly and I give as an example (one, Arthur) whom I knew well, who was captured when a mere infant, and brought up and educated at the Queen's Orphan School at Hobart Town. His ideas were perfectly English, and there was not the smallest dash of savage in him. He was a very conversable man, fond of reading, and spoke and wrote English quite grammatically. One of his neighbours was a grasping and unprincipled fellow, who mistook Arthur for a person with whom ​he might do as he pleased, and encroached on a cultivated part of his land, which Arthur had no idea of suffering. (After vain expostulation, Arthur employed a surveyor.) This operation proved that Arthur was right, and that he knew his proper boundaries quite well. When he saw that his opponent was satisfied, he said: ' Well, Mr.———, though you have tried to wrong me, I will treat you differently from what I believe you would have done to me if I was in your place. You can come on my land and remove your crop when it is ripe.'"
Mr. Bonwick adds that Arthur had not thoroughly adopted the civilization of his conquerors, for "such conduct was scarcely that generally adopted by our enlightened countrymen." Mr. Bonwick knew the hero of this tale, and declared that "his face presented no aggravation of the native features, though sufficiently betraying the black man. If standing on the steps of the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, he would have been often selected as a model for his magnificent head." Such was one of the pure blood of the vanished tribes of Tasmania.
APPENDIX.
There was, in 1883, a collection of weapons called boomerangs in the South Kensington Museum, and the description in the catalogue spoke of the curved throwing-sticks for killing game as the returning boomerang of the Australians. The explanation of the returning movement was stated (p. 29) to be due to the continuance of rotation "after the forward movement has ceased by which means the axis of rotation continuing parallel to itself, and the fore-part of the weapon being tilted upwards, in falling, it glides backwards on an inclined plane."
This description is true of a card struck upwards so as to make it rotate. It will return on an inclined plane to the person who sent it, but it will return almost as if pulled back by a thread. So will three thin pieces of wood fastened cross-wise. Neither the card nor the wood will return if projected almost perpendicularly. In some tribes a toy-boomerang was made which was thrown almost horizontally, but upwards and its path was, though it went far, somewhat similar to that of ​a card. But the boomerang whose path has not been explained pursued a totally different course.
| | | D | | |
| E | | | | C |
| F | | | | B |
| | G | A | | |
| | THROWER. | THROWER. | THROWER. |
Thrown to the right of the thrower (A) it went in a circuit. Starting from A it would at B be 40 or 50 feet high still rising it would be at D more than 100 feet high and 80 or 100 paces from the thrower; at G it might be as high or higher than at D, and would then, if a perfect instrument, float in gyratory rotations to the ground. Thrown almost perpendicularly so as to strike the ground between A and B it would rise in the air and pursue a course similar to, but not quite so lengthy as, that just described. The point at G might be variable according to the strength imparted. The boomerang might finish its main circle at F, or, if remarkably good, might first pass over the thrower's head, and then commence its descending gyrations.
A boomerang made narrower and heavier would make the circuit without rising more than 40 feet, and continue its course (without ever assuming a horizontal position) until it reached the ground (after passing the thrower) at or beyond B. Rarely there were left-handed natives. They made boomerangs which circled from left to right. They could, however, by lowering the head and bringing the left hand over the right shoulder, throw a right-hand boomerang; and, vice versâ, a right-handed man could throw a left-hand boomerang. Though one side of the instrument was flatter than the other, and the warps of each half were almost, but not quite, identical, it was not the fact that so long as the flattest side was thrown outermost the boomerang might be thrown indifferently by making a handle of either end. Therefore the left-handed man could not throw a right-hand boomerang by simply making a handle of the opposite end to that used by the right-handed man, and throwing from left to right. The natives when fashioning a boomerang always insisted that if it performed the first half of its circuit well, and failed in its second, it was because the end not used as a handle was deficiently warped, and they proceeded to warp it properly. There remains, to vouch for their accuracy, the fact that each boomerang was constructed so that it could only be thrown properly by using the end fitted by the fashioner to be the handle.
The catalogue remarked at South Kensington (p. 35) that the fac-simile of the Egyptian boomerang, 167 to 169, fig. 18, with practice could be made to return to within a few feet of the feet of the thrower." The figure in the catalogue did not show the thickness of the ends of the weapon, or the roundness of its ends, but to anyone conversant with the returning boomerang of Australia, a sight of the fac-simile showed that it was absolutely impossible for the so-called Egyptian boomerangs to pursue the path of the Australian.
The same thing may be said of those shown as Dravidian boomerangs. Other weapons were exhibited as "modern African Iron Boomerangs," but unless every missile hurled so as to rotate is to be called a boomerang, it is difficult to discover why the term is thus applied.
A tomahawk or a knife may be made to rotate, but always with forward progress; and a glance at the weapons of the Kolis of Gnzerat, and the Marawar of Madura, as well as those from Kattyawar, in the South ​Kensington Museum, proved at once that they were missiles for straight-forward progress. The Australians used many varieties of such weapons, but they did not call them returning boomerangs, and it is a pity that by an unhappy confusion of terms the circling instrument has been associated with the progressive one. If any person were to show an Australian native the instrument figured 20 in the Catalogue, and stated (p. 30) as "found to fly with a return flight like the Australian boomerang," the Australian would need great command of countenance to restrain his laughter. The author regrets that he can furnish no scientific explanation of the course of the circling instrument, but is consoled by the fact that a valued friend—the late Professor W. P. Wilson, a Senior Wrangler of Cambridge—when he saw the instrument thrown in Australia, declared that no explanation had been given of its path. Reasons which apply to the return of the card were, in his opinion, inapplicable. [1896. The number of people whom the author met in England (in a few short years) who had implicitly believed that the plaything was a weapon for war, proved how hard it is to weed out a popular error.]
* ↑ A French work of fiction, by Jaques Sadeur, published in 1693—"Nouveau Voyage de la Terre Australe"—styled the imagined inhabitants "Australiens." A translation, published in London in 1693 not only used the term "Australians," but rendered "la terre Australe" into "Australia." A "Histoire dee Navigateurs aux Terres Australes," published in Paris in 1756, called the natives "Australiens," but merely called the land "la Terre Australe." Flinders may have been none of these books, and in neither of the French works in the name which pleased him given to the land.
* ↑ Computations of area are diverse and liable to be changed.
* ↑ In the first edition of this work some space was devoted to a physical description of Australia; Dr. A. R. Wallace's "Australasia" has made it superfluous to enter into details on the subject in this edition.
* ↑ A run is the general term for the tract of country on which Australians keep their stock, or allow them to "run."
* ↑ Since the first edition of this work was published in 1883, a great change has been wrought in Queensland, South Australia, and New South Wales by boring artesian wells, in many of which the supply of water seems exhaustless. It is to be hoped that it may prove so, for by means of these wells enormous regions where there is much grass, otherwise unavailable, are turned to use. The New South Wales statistician mentions one well as yielding five millions of gallons daily.
* ↑ 1894. In Wallace's "Australasia," 1893, it is stated that "there are more than 160 species of eucalyptus in Australia." Of the acacia genus the same work states that there are nearly 300 species" there.
* ↑ Jam nova progenies cœlo demittitur alto.
* ↑ The author would not venture on this assertion except on the authority of Professor Owen, the monarch of comparative anatomy, who gathered the dry bones of antiquity and restored the forms of the past.
* ↑ 1894. The author was in London in 1883 when the first edition of this work was published, and Professor Owen volunteered to look over the proofs relating to the Australian fauna. He made several notes with his own hand besides that relating to the Thylacoleo.
* ↑ Profeesor Owen was much interested when informed by the author of an instance in which a native was wounded in the wrist by the spur of the platypus. Faintness followed, and the arm and glands were swollen for many days, A wasting of the arm succeeded, and some weeks elapsed before it resumed its power. When recovered, the man asked the author if he wanted any skins of the platypus as he was about to avenge himself. He succeeded (going alone in a bark canoe) in killing several in one afternoon in the river Murnimbidgee, Professor W. H. Flower, in describing the platypus, wrote:—"On the heel of the male is a strong, curved, sharply pointed, movable, thorny spur directed upwards and backwards, attached by its expanded base to the accessory bone of the tarsus. This spur, which attains the length of nearly an inch, is traversed by a minute canal, terminating in a fine longitudinal slit near the point, and connected at its base with the duct of a large gland situated at the back part of the thigh." The natives were so well acquainted with the power of the spur that they seldom suffered from it. The anthors friend was wounded while drawing to the edge of a canoe a platypus he had speared. A companion made a movemont which nearly upset the canoe, and in balancing his frail bark the spearman received his wound. He secured his prey.
* ↑ One fact known to the natives is more creditable to the maternal affection of the kangaroo than is a commonly entertained idea that this creature when chased throws its young from its pouch as a prey for its pursuers in order that the mother may save her life by sacrificing her off-spring. The author was on foot in steep country with a native. The dogs pursued several kangaroos, and one of them, as it passed near the huntsmen, hastily threw its young one close to some bushes, under which it crouched. The native said: "Sit still, and if the dogs should not catch her she will come back for her young one." In effect the dogs singled out a different animal, and in a very brief space the mother, having made a circuit, returned to the spot by the way in which she originally approached it, went straight to the bush where the young one instinctively lay concealed, placed it in her pouch and departed.
* ↑ "Prof. Owen wrote in the margin, "a long name is a good veil of ignorance. It was at his suggestion that the author added the note about the maternal affection of the kangaroo, mentioned to him in conversation.
* ↑ The sagacious Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, the hammer of infidels in the eighteenth century, predicted that the mother language of the Southern dialects would be discovered in some part of Asia."
* ↑ Prof. Owen wrote "always" instead of "often."
* ↑ Prof. Owen wrote "good" as to this statement.
* ↑ A native (the man wounded by the platypus) who was readier than most of his countrymen, though many were eloquent on occasion, boasted to the author that he had overcome in argument a doctor of physic who contended that the world revolved on its own axis. Native: If it did we could not stand; we should tumble down. Doctor: No; we don't fall from a moving coach. Native: But the coach has its top upwards. When the world had got us to the under side we should fall away. Doctor: No; the flies don't fall from the ceiling. Native: Well, how would the rivers run? Doctor: Oh, all the same as when we are on the coach. Native: Ah, doctor, that won't do. Perhaps the river running the same way that the world was turning might run all right, but the river running the other way—how could that manage, always the wrong way—uphill?With great glee the triumphant casuist declared that the doctor was silenced.As a contrast, it may be mentioned that an English peasant, grumbling at the "wrong things" taught, said to the author that the only good he could see in a school was to keep children out of mischief. "Why, sir, they teaches 'em as the world's round. That's all very well for people as hasn't travelled, but for you and me, sir, as has come out to the colony in a ship, it won't do, for we knows well as it's flat."Which of these men, the Caucasian or the Australian, would any reader prefer for a companion? Always cheerful, often witty, keen for sport, and an accomplished huntsman, the Australian was a general favourite. On one occasion he travelled from the Murrumbidgee (his native place) to Adelaide with cattle. The small vessel which was to carry his employer and others to Sydney was wrecked on Kangaroo Island. When the party escaped to the shore the native was rudely treated by some who grudged him room in the boat. But soon the scene was changed. He became their hope, and the grudgers cringed to him. "I was almost like a governor. The same meu who wanted to keep me out of the boat came to me like sheep. Please, Jemmy, come and catch a kangaroo, or show us how. Oh, do! It made me laugh. They did not deserve it, but I had to help them, for I did not want them to starve. They were a bad lot."Sir Thomas Mitchell was accompanied in his official explorations by natives. He wrote:—"They have been described as the lowest in the scale of humanity, yet I found those who accompanied me superior in penetration and judgment to the white men composing my party." Such is the difference between personal experience and the evolution of a scheme in a study.
* ↑ "One gentleman published a vocabulary (of the King George's Sound dialect) which has been largely quoted from by other writers; in this the numerals as high as ten are given, although the natives only counted to four, and the translations of some words he has put down as numbers are very humorous: such as What do you mean? Get out,' &c."—"Travels in North-West and Western Australia." Sir G. Grey. Vol. ii., p. 216. The author has known similar cases, and has discussed them with the wearied witness afterwards with amusement.
* ↑ "Imperial Gazetteer of India. 1881. W. W. Hunter.
* ↑ Dr. A. R. Wallace in his learned work "Australasia" (E. Stanford, London, 1893) arrives at the conclusion that the Australians are really of Caucasian type, and are more nearly allied to ourselves than the civilized Japanese or the brave and intelligent Zulus."
* ↑ "The Handbook of Western Australia," by the Rev. C. G. Nicolay. By Authority. Perth: 1880.
* ↑ The Rev. Mr. Ridley, who spoke it well, wrote:-"The inflections of verbs and nouns, the derivation and composition of words, the arrangement of sentences, and the method of imparting emphasis, indicate an accuracy of thought and a force of expression surpassing all that is commonly supposed to be obtainable by a savage race. It need hardly be said that a very common statement that the Australians had no abstract terms-no adjectives such as hard," "soft," "cruel," "kind," "cold," hot," "warm," "severe," "gentle," &c.—has no foundation. Dr. Milligan, indeed, while making the statement with regard to Tasmanians,admits that his ignorance of their language impeded his inquiries.
* ↑ It must be borne in mind that there were different customs in different tribes. When using general terms the author endeavours to refer to the customs most widely diffused.
* ↑ In 1858 a Select Committee of the Legislative Council of Victoria was appointed to report upon the aborigines. In the replies to a query as to their form of government, about an equal number of witnesses described it as patriarchal, monarchic, and democratic. A similar number said they had none at all.
* ↑ The author cannot be deterred from this statement by the fanciful ideas that the cateia of Virgil was a boomerang—that anything like it has been invented in India, or was represented in the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. The natural grain of wood was not more favourable to an artificer in Australia than in any other country. Expert carpenters have vainly tried to make a boomerang, although having an excellent sample to copy. They could smooth the curved wood, but knew not how to warp the wings laterally. A card made to rotate and sent upwards at an angle of forty-five degrees, but without elevation of either end in its flight, will return to the sender, but it does not imitate the path of the boomerang. Three thin pieces of flat wood fastened crosswise in the middle will act like the card, but will not follow the circular course which kept the boomerang in air until it had traversed more than two hundred yards in forward movements while rotating with a velocity which, if one end be touched with fire, makes it look like a flying ring of light in the darkness. The expert thrower can with great nicety, by accommodating the strength used, make the same boomerang follow always the same course and return to the same spot. Different boomerangs require slightly different treatment in throwing, and follow different courses. The curved shape is well known. Of various lengths and widths, it forms a flat are varying in width of wood, its curve varying from twenty degrees upwards. The boomerang made to return was more curved than the war-boomerang. Some tribes excelled others in the manufacture of the former. The perfect instrument thrown almost upright (to the right of the shoulder of the thrower) performed the whole of its flight in departing from the thrower without assuming a horizontal position. That position was acquired on its return before it floated to the ground. The ill-constructed instrument was thrown at a much less angle, the position became horizontal almost immediately, and the path in the air was less circular than that of the well-made boomerang. It was not in all places that appropriate tough wood was plentiful. The art which made the boomerang return to the thrower, after seemingly fantastic circles, was expended on the warping of the wings. The side which was undermost as it flew was flatter than the other. The thickness of the wood was greatest at about a third of the width from the outer edge of the arc. The edges were everywhere sharp. In each wing, or each half, there were slight, almost imperceptible warps, which ruled the flight In forming them the fashioner warmed the wood over hot ashes (after it was shaped by the tomahawk), and while its flexibility was increased, warped the boomerang to the required degree, which was ascertained by experimental throwing. Different curvatures, specific gravities, and widths, made the flight capricious. The path of one was not always like that of another which appeared alike in shape; but the Australian could always fashion a sound piece of curved wood so as to make it pursue the course for which its gravity, and the width he allowed, fitted it. Light and broad, it floated slowly to the earth. Narrow and heavy, it hurtled rapidly through its course.
* ↑ "It is to be noticed that Sir W. W. Hunter, in the Imperial Gazetteer of India, and Sir W. P. Andrew, in his "India and Her Neighbours," speak of the boomerang as the weapon of aboriginal tribes in the south of India. But the missile of those tribes was not like the "returning" boomerang of Australia. It was akin to those weapons for forward progress which the Australians hurled point-blank at game. Their rotation was rapid, and though the Australians had a different name for each variety, the term boomerang was applied by the colonists to all. This nomenclature was fitted to mislead, and has misled, writers in other countries. The author consulted friends, long resident in India, while revising the text. One, A. Pooley Onslow, Esq., did not recollect hearing of the practice of using the throwing-stick in India "later than about" 1828. All agreed that the returning boomerang was unknown there. Lt.-General W. C. R. Macdonald, C.B., acquainted with all parts of India, confirmed this statement. The Indian missile, as exhibited in the South Kensington Museum, was sometimes exactly like one variety used in Australia for point-blank throwing. It flew with a rotatory motion (as did the steel quoit used by the Sikhs), and great precision of aim was acquired with it. The use of the point-blank missile in India may be cited, perhaps, as a slight corroborative proof that the Australians migrated from Hindostan.
* ↑ As the colonists called them all boomerangs, the natives accommodated themselves to the term, and its use cannot now be avoided. Barracun was the name of the returning instrument in the tribe with whose language the author was acquainted.
* ↑ Government Printing Office. Sydney: 1875.
* ↑ Published by Mr. Geo. Robertson in Melbourne in 1881.
* ↑ On the east a native (who had been sent to school and had carried off prizes amongst white boys) when he returned to the bush entered the corps of native Police, and sadly said to his commanding officer (as quoted by the good missionary Ridley), "I wish I had never been taken out of the bush and educated as I have been, for I cannot be a white man; they will never look upon me as one of themselves; and I cannot be a black fellow, for I am disgusted with their mode of living."
* ↑ Various opinions were expressed at the meeting of the Society. One speaker said that "his experience of the aborigines of Northern Queensland supported what had been stated in Mr. Manning's notes."—Sydney Morning Herald, 4th Nov. 1882.
* ↑ Baia-me, in the Kamilaroi widely-extended dialect. Baiamai, in the equally widely-extended Wiradhuri. Biumbai (though Mr. Ridley does not mention the fact), on the Lower Hunter River, once thickly populated by a people who have disappeared within the memory of the author, who spoke and has survived their dialect. The Rev. Mr. Threlkeld spells the
* ↑ A similar conclusion was reached in another quarter of the globe. In a paper read by Sir Bartle Frere in London to the Royal Colonial Institute (22nd Feb. 1881), he said it was "irresistibly borne in upon anybody who carefully studies the habits and characteristics of the South African races, that they are all, without exception, the degraded descendants of races who have once been in a state of higher civilization. By 'degraded' I mean simply men who have lost what their ancestors once possessed of higher culture and more complete civilization, rather than men who have succeeded an ancestry ruder and less humanized. We find them, in fact, in South Africa descending in the scale of humanity and not ascending. This, however, is a matter of opinion, and I only state the result at which, in common with many close observers of these races, I have arrived."
* ↑ Quoted in "South Australian Aboriginal Folk-Lore." Taplin. Adelaide: 1879.
* ↑ "Kamilaroi and Kurnai" (Melbourne, 1880), by L. Fison and A. W. Howitt, with Introduction by Dr. Lewis H. Morgan, of America.
* ↑ An instance was furnished by the able and excellent Moravian, Rev. F. A. Hagenauer, who presided over the Presbyterian mission, Kamahyuck in Gipps Land, where waifs from various tribes were assembled. The daughter of an old man was selected on the station to marry a young man to whom, by Australian law, she ought not to be married. The old man told Mr. Hagenauer: "You may marry them like the white people cannot, because it is against my law. I will come back when they are married." He absented himself on the day of the ceremony, and on his return proved by his friendly demeanour to his forbidden son-in-law that no personal dislike actuated him in clinging to the doomed law of his fore-fathers. (Evidence before Royal Commission in Victoria, 1877.) One man sadly remarked to the author that perhaps the decay of the race was due to its modern disobedience to its ancient marriage laws.
* ↑ As the tribe could not appease him by explanations they were careful not to provoke him to anger. Except when angry he was good-natured, and, as the tribe were studiously gentle in their demeanour to him, he was seldom angry.
* ↑ The judgment of Mr. Lecky (History of European Morals) and Mr. Galton (Hereditary Genius) go far beyond the affirmation in the text.
* ↑ He adopts the terminology of Dr. Morgan (Ancient Society). A "consanguine family" signifies intermarriage of brothers and sisters in groups. A Punaluau family" indicates intermarriage of several brothers to each other's wives in a group. A "Syndiasmian family" indicates "the pairing of a male and female, but without exclusive cohabitation." Not one of these forms was extant in Australia, and yet it is attempted to derive the intricate and unswerving marriage laws of the tribes from them!
* ↑ "Aborigines of Victoria." Edited by R. B. Smyth.
* ↑ The names of the classes or totems in Gipps' Land were different, according to Mr. Howitt, from any found elsewhere. They were derived from small birds. As Mr. Fison remarks, this fact is not deeply important. The Kurnai had the institution, though under a different name. The Narrinyerri tribes had no less than eighteen totems derived from quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and fish. In the same work which recites their totems ("South Australian Aboriginal Folk-Lore") will be found an amusing instance of the confused manner in which persons, presumed to be conversant with the customs of the natives, enlarge upon them. Among the most widely-spread designations of totems are the Keelparrah (crow), and Muqwarrah (eagle). Among printed questions sent to a person who had had many years' experience among the natives were: 4. Is the tribe divided into clans? 5. Has each clan a totem?-that is, some beast, bird, &c., the symbol of the tribe? 6. Are there class names, or a kind of castes in the tribe ? 7. . . . clan marriages 8. . . . Marriage customs and ceremonies. The answers were: 4. The tribe is divided into five classes, called respectively-Condelkoo, Boolkarlie, Moattillkoo, Bullalre, Toopparlie. 5. These clans have no totems whatever. 6. There are class names-the Keelparrah and the Muqwarrah. 7. Only a Keelparrah can marry a Muqwarrah. A Keelparrah must not marry a Keelparrah, nor a Muqwarrah a Muqwarrah. 8. . . . At times (betrothment) "which must in due time be carried out." 12. Blood relations are not allowed to marry. These aborigines are very strict on that point.
* ↑ Sir John Lubbock ("Prehistoric Times") gives an illustration of Tasmanian fire-sticks presented to him by G. A. Robinson, the conciliator of the shattered remnants of the tribes.
* ↑ Mr. J. E. Calder published (Tasmania, 1875) an account of the natives, in compiling which he consulted official documents in Hobart Town. The decrease in the tribes puzzled Mr. Calder. "It was," he said, "assignable to very different causes than the hostility of the whites, to which it has been so much the fashion to ascribe it, for up to the time of their voluntary surrender to the government they not only maintained their ground everywhere (the towns excepted), but had by far the best of the fight: . . . in this unequal contest the musket of the Englishman was far less deadly than the spear of the savage, at least five of the former dying to one of the latter."
* ↑ The Native Tribes of Tasmania," p. 31. (J. E. Calder, Tasmania.)
* ↑ "The Last of the Tasmanians." p. 353. James Bonwick. London: 1870. Arthur was married to a half-caste. They had no children. Mr. Bonwick sadly records the fact that Arthur became dissipated, and while plying as a boatman between Hobart Town and Oyster Cove, was drowned by the upsetting of a boat in 1861.