The St. Johns herald., 1890-05-15
NATIVE AUSTRALIANS,
Information O5tai1eI From the Last
 Survivor c: a Mighty Clan.


 Survivor c: Mighty Clan.
 In the magnificent city Of Mel bourne, Australia, there lives a prince named Berak. wha is the last surviving sen of tho Australian chieftain Yarra- Yarra, who once possessed the land lipcn winch Mel bourne and its environs stand. Berak does not now live in princely style. Fl S laily-worn clothes a 6 th gifts of benevolent persons, and h lodges and subsi,ts upon charity. II can hardly be called q began, for he never asks for any thing; but if 8 bit of silver is slipped into his hand to buy tobacco with. he accepts it with thanks.
 For all his poverty, Bo"ak is said to be fine-looking man. He is about sixty-fve yeas old, quite back. little under medium height. white bearded and straight-haired. He has a fine forehead, a Grecian nose; age, mid and expressive eyes, and thin lips. When he smiles, as he often does, he shows all his thlrty-two teeth, still perfectly whole, white and shapely.
 Berak, who takes his own reduced circumstances and the decline of his race ouite philosophically, is fond O. telling the story of his people, the Australian natives.
 Before the arrival of the English, these people h ad neither cattle, horses. sheep nor liens. They did not culti- vate the ound and lived wholly by hunting and fishing. Their chief game was the kangaroo, the small Australian bear, paroquets of various kinds, a so-t Of w.Id duck or widgeon and the black swan-for in Australia the black..i ds are white and thes black. The natives fshed neither with the hook nor with the net, but lanced both fish and ee.s.
 Berak acknowledges freely that his ancestors were cannibals; he even re- members talk ng part in cannibal feast in his own childhood. But his De )ple, he says, never ate any of the Eng. .-shmcn. 1t is the Engiishmen who have eaten the Berak!'
 The native Australians were cruel in their punishments. Great crim- inals were beaten to death with clubs in the presence of the tribes. At the same time, they were not without k.nd feelings. When, upon the march, an old and feeb man had fallen out of lie line, 1t was their custom to send back two CT three stalwart warriors to guard and assist him.
 Such of the native Australians as still survive in a savage state possess many peculiar customs. Strangers meeting must remain some time silent. and if they become good friends, they signify it by exchanging names. The name, they think, is part of the man himself, and to possess it gives a power for evil, So that it should bo known on.y to friends.
 Although the Australians are not. as a rule, po'ygaaists, they bod their women should be kept in subjection, and cut of the last joint of the little finger Of females as 8 sign of their subordination. The men undergo still more remarkable mutilat;on as a sign Of sabjection to their chiefs; they have their teeth knocked out by their 'l1oradger men, CT priests. Berak, being Q chief by birth, escaped this ceremony.
 Hagarth, traveller who has de- scr.bed the ways of the Austra iaHs. writes of semi-domesticated native that said to him enc day, with a look of importance, that he must go away for few days, as he had grown up to mans estate, and it was high time that he should have his teeth knocked out.
 The Australians have long been re- garded as enc of the most degraded of races, but they possessed, at least when first visited by the Europeans, many excellent anl friendly qualities. They have diminished until they now number only about seventy-fve thou sand, and no doubt will, before many generations, completely disappear, as the natives of Tasmania have already donc.-YoutA's Companion.
 
 Origin Of the Namo "Iowa."