The aborigines of New South Wales

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CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

FROM

The Hitchcock Estate

Cornell University Library
GN667.N5 F84

Aborigines of New South Wales.

Clin

3 1924 029 890 013

Cornell University
Library

The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

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the United States on the use of the text.

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I, 1, 3^ Kamal-arai
Ka.ma.!-a_ra.i proper
2.Wil-arcu
3. Sat-irnba

4. Yu^ .gdi

5. Yikka-jiri
5. Paikal-yu_g
7. Waxi-^aji

Kurig-jai
9. Murrin-jarj
lO.Garego
I.Wira-dhin

12. Associated tribes

(Uci-!a.ci, TitaM
Yittha, Yiri-ijiri,4i;.)

13. Bai-kan-ji

14. Kornu?

Published by Autliority of the New South Wales Commissioners
for the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

THE ABORIGINES

OF

NEW SOUTH WALES,

BY

JOHN ERASER, B.A., LL.D.,

SYDNEY.

CHARLES POTTER, GOVERNMENT PRINTER, PHILLIP-STREET.

1802.

12A 121—92 A

I^Written by Dr. John Fraser at the request of the New
South "Wales Commission for the World's Columbian
Exposition at Chicago, and published under its authority.

la-ALL EIGHTS RESERYED.-m,

CONTENTS,

PAGE.

I.

Introduction ... ... ... ... ... , . . . ... 1

II.

Birth and Childhood

2

III.

Maturity...

6

IV.

Marriage

.. 26

V.

The Tribe

.. 36

VI.

Social and Domestic

.. 43

VII.

Weapons, Tools, Utensils

.. 69

VIII.

Death and Burial

.. 78

IX.

Conclusion ...

.. 90

X.

Appendix

The Illustrations ...

Physical Measurements

1. Anthropometry

2. Stature

3. Census of Aborigines (1891)

4. Craniometry

Index

..91-101

.. 91

..91-100
.. 92
.. 95
.. 95
.. 96

.. 101

THE ABORIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

-INTRODUCTION.

AjS^ American negro knows that Africa is his ultimate home of origiD, but, if
one of our Australian Uacks at this " "World's Exposition " were to claim
him as a kinsman, the claim would, in most instances, be promptly rejected
as absurd. And yet the whole of Australia and 'New Guinea and the New
Hebrides, and many of the adjacent islands are, at this moment, occupied by
black tribes which are branches of an Eastern Ethiopian race, just as truly
as the American negroes are sprung from the Western Ethiopians of Africa.
These two divisions of the Ethiopian race have existed from the earliest
times ; for, from the opening lines of the Odyssey, it is evident that Homer
knew of them in his day; and in the beginning of the fifth century B.C.,
they were distinct portions of the army that Xer.tes led against Greece ; for,
speaking of them, Herodotus says, "The Ethiopians from the sun-rise (for
two kinds served in the expedition) were marshalled with the Indians, and
did not at all diifer from the others in appearance, but only in their language
and their hair. Por the Eastern Ethiopians are straight-haired, but those of
Libya have liair more curly than that of any other people. These Ethiopians
from Asia were accoutred almost the same as the Indians." (Ser., VII-70.)

At a much earlier period than Homer's time, these Ilamites or Ethiopians
were one and undivided ; for, on the plains of Babylonia, probably 1500 years
before that, they seem to have aspired to universal dominion under the leader-
ship of Nimrod, who was of their blood, and it is quite possible that the
Akkadians of primitive Babylonia were Hamites.

If the reader should think it strange that I assert claims of kindred
between the Australian indigenes and the American negroes — races who now
live in regions so far apart, and in outward circumstances so very different —
I would simply ask him to think of the relation which he himself, as a native-
born American, bears to many of us in Australia. Three hundred years
ago, your individual ancestors and ours lived in the same village, perhaps, in
Hampshire ; the colonising spirit of our common race there, or the pressure
of arbitrary power later on, carried your forefathers to the Columbian land,
while ours remained behind, till, in the fulness of time, the thirst for gold
or the prospect of a happier life led us hither ; and yet I presume that neither
Americans nor Australians desire now to disown their common ancestry,
separated though we are by the width of a vast ocean. The causes which
led to this severance from the old stock in your case and ours were mostly
of a peaceful kind ; but it must have been violence that broke the Babylonian
Hamites into two pieces, and hurled them to the west and to the east — into
Africa, and towards Australia. In a great battle, the enemy's line or columns
may be firm and dense ; yet the charge of a mass of heavy cavalry will cut
that line in two, and scatter the fragments far a-field by the mere force of
the impact ; and, if the disrupting force be strong enough, the broken portions
may be kept apart, unable to unite again. Somewhat in this way, I think.

2 THE ABOEIGINES OE NEW SOUTH WALES.

were the black Hamites driven from Babylonia. Settled on these fertile
plains, they had increased tp a great multitude, when a powerful race from
the north — perhaps the Shemites, who afterwards formed the kingdom of
Assyria — fell upon them and broke them in two ; one portion fled into
Africa ; the other — the one which concerns my present inquiry — w;as driven
into India ; thence, after many and various experiences, into the Eastern
Peninsula and Archipelago, and thence into Australia and Melanesia. On
this theory, which is in part based on the facts of history, I account for the
kinship of the African negro to the Australian indigene.

It will not be necessary, at this point, to say more about the origin of the
Australian black man ; I now proceed to examine him in his native environ-
ment, as he grows up from birth to manhood, and thence from manhood to
old age.

If the limits assigned to this pamphlet had permitted, additional sections
could have been introduced, treating of the 'karaji' or medicine-man, spirit-
world, mythology, the physical features of the natives, their moral and
intellectual qualities, their cave-paintings and other specimens of art, their
language, as well as the probable origin and migrations of the Australian
race. But, as it is, many of my facte and arguments are here produced for
the first time ; and the same facts are sometimes referred to in two or more
sections, for they belong to each.

II.-BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.

Sirtli '^^® children of an Australian household have a pleasant time

TheMother °^ ^*' ^^* *^® ^°* °^ *^® mother is indeed hard. Married at
an early age, she has not only to bear and rear the children,
but she does all the heavy work of the family ; in camp, it is her duty t^
put up the rude .wind-shelter of sticks and foliage which serves them as a
home, to make a fire and keep it burning, and to cook the food ; on the
march, she carries in a bag, resting on her back and slung from her neck, all
their portable property, and seated on this bag is her youngest child, kept
securely there and protected from the weather by a cloak of opossum skin,
which is also fastened round her neck ; in this bag, in addition to the few
utensils she requires for domestic labours, she has a yam-stick with which to
dig up the numerous native roots which are used as iood, a supply of these
and of other articles of food required for a meal, a quantity of native string
and hooks for catching fish. As her husband walks along, she follows him
at a respectful distance, and, if there is any conversation between them, it
flies from front to rear and back again. If they sit down to meal, she still
keeps behind and gets her share flung to her without ceremony. For the
ready kindling of a fire, whenever it is required, she has to carry with her a
smouldering piece of firewood ; if she allows this to go out, and thus put
her lord and master to the labour of getting fire by friction, or if she in any
other way gives him displeasure, he will beat her severely, even till her body
is covered with bruises and her hair is matted with blood ; she sulks, perhaps,
for a while thereafter, but soon forgets her beating ; for is that not the common
lot of all black women? And yet the kuri or 'black man* is usually kind
and affectionate to his jin, 'wife,' and they are, both of them, specially kind
and. indulgent to their children ; if any of the younger ones is injured by an
accident, or diseased, or sick, he is carefully tended until well • if he is
deformed or otherwise helpless, his parents carry him about even for years,
and his brothers must hunt for him, and thus supply him with food.

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.

^ . And yet these same men, so tender towards the young, have
, ,. ' ' cannibal propensities which they occasionally indulge. If a
neighbour's child is fat and plump, some of them thinlc that
they are hungry, and, in the absence of the mother, they kill the child and
cook it and share it among them. On one occasion, a grown women, whose
bodily condition was that of an ox iit for the shambles, overheard some men
expressing a desire for a feast on her flesh ; but, discovering herself, she
routed them with such a storm of indignant words as a black woman only can
utter. The blacks of the present day deny this cannibalism, but it certainly
was practised, although not generally ; it exists even now in Queensland.

-p , ,■ In some conditions of her life, the principles laid down in the
,. " fifteenth chapter of Leviticus (vv. 19,33) strictly apply to a
black woman, whether married or single. She sequesters her-
self for a time ; she must not cook any food for others, for everything she
touches is unclean ; she lies on the other side of the fire, away from her
husband ; and a blackfellow, moving about in the bush, will go a long distance
round about to avoid her tracks in such a case ; if she sees him drawing
near her in ignorance, she must call out to warn him, lest contact, even of
the faintest kind, should make his hair turn prematurely grey or bring other
evils. A 'kuri' onceslept in a blanket that had been used by his 'jin.' When
he came to know that it was defiled, he thrust his wife through with a spear,
and shortly after he himself died from fear of the consequences of this
pollution. In some localities, she must paint her head and body down to the
waist with red clay, and shun all contact with others.

Parturition is easy, and no assistance is required. If the band is on the
move, the woman goes aside into the bush alone or with a female companion,
and ere long she rejoins them, either with or without the child ; for infanti-
cide is common. If a mother thinks her daily toil so heavy that the child is
to be a burden she cannot -bear, she buries it in a sand-heap, or puts a pebble
in its mouth to choke it, or simply leaves it to perish where it is. Or, if the
father thinks that the care of the little one will impair to him the value of
his wife's labours, he takes a club, and, notwithstanding the resistance of the
mother (for she is not always forsaken by her natural affection), he kills the
child. It is curious that, in some places, the maternal uncle is expected to do
this deed, and that, in other respects and in other circumstances of a boy's life,
this uncle acts as a father to him. Girls especially are not spared. To
escape drudgery also, women, who are about to become mothers, kill the
child by violence before its birth. The natives do not regard infanticide as
a moral offence or a violation of law, but simply as a matter of convenience,
ren-ulated by the circumstances of each case ; for, in an instance known to
me, the parents killed two. or three of their earliest offspring and yet spared
children that came after, and reared them carefully.

A black women likes to have children by a white father, for the half-casto
son has the qualities of a superior race. Pifty years ago, in one locality
which I know, the half-castes had become so num.erous that the leaders of
the tribe, after deliberation, killed the whole of them. They feared that the
young men would be too powerful for the tribe, because of their white blood.

If the band happens to be in camp when a birth is imminent, the father
gets out of the way for several days ; one or two married women come in to
nurse the baby ; the sick mother is kept warm, with hot stones, if necessary;
she drinks only tepid water, and very little solid food is given to her ; in a
very short time she is well again. There are very few deaths from child-birth,
and there are no idiot children.

THE ABORIGINES OF NEW SOUTH "WALES.

>, .. As in other negro and negroid regions, so here; there is very
""• little abortion from natural causes, and few deformed or peculiar
births, although an albino sometimes appears and is allowed to live.

rp-i pj -J J The newly-born child is not black, but somewhat fair in colour ;
the blackness appears first on the forehead and then gradually
spreads. The soles of the feet and the palms remain white for some time,
and these, even in the grown man, are of a light pinkish colour. A half-caste
man and a half-caste women at Gloucester had several children ; the first-
born grew up to be fairer than black children are, but those that followed
were darker and darker ; at last, a friend of mine said to the father, " Jimmy,
how is this"? "Oh," he replied, "that is always so ; the black blood
comes out at last." And, so far as my information goes, that explanation
seems to be correct. The new-born babe is not washed or swaddled ; it is
simply rubbed all over with grease and charcoal, and laid near the fire, or
committed to the nurse's arms, if there is one present ; the placenta is
buried. A chrysalis, got from under the bark of a tree, is much valued as
food for the child ; it tastes like raw eggs. The mother suckles the child,
and continues to suckle it for a very long time, perhaps two years or more ;
the indigestible nature of the black man's food, and the uncertainty of the
supply of it, render this necessary for the rearing of the child. Prom the
hardness of her lot in these and other respects, a black women is barren and
old at thirty. There is a restriction of food for the woman herself when
she is about to become a mother ; she must not eat kangaroo or eel or birds.
In Melanesia, the father, too, at that time abstains from certain kinds of food,
on the belief that in some occult way they would iujure the child.

-y . This is a very simple affair ; if the scream of an eagle was heard
^' at the moment of the birth, or the hoot of an owl, or if a bandi-
coot or kangaroo was seen to pass by, the name of that animal, with some
derivative termination added, is applied to the child ; one was even named from
fire, because the htit caught fire when the child was born. In some quarters
the father and mother, after the birth of their first child, are addressed by
the name of their child in honour; a formative — anni for the father and
annike for the mother — is added to the name to make it apply to them.
As a parallel to that, we remember that the tribes among whom David
Livingstone laboured had a similar custom. Among his i5arotse people
too children bore the name of gun, horse, waggon, &c. Among the Kal-
mucks of the Lower Volga, it is customary to carry the new-born babe
into the open air, and whatever object first meets the eye — be it sheep, dog,
or anything else — that gives its name to the child. Besides the similar
usages among us, our blacks also give the child a name from the place where
it was born ; as Awabakal, 'a man of Awaba,' Awabakalin, 'a woman of
Awaba,' England-kal, ' tbe English.' They have words too to describe
the different stages of a man's life ; for instance, one tribal dialect says —
taicum, 'a baby'; balun, 'a boy'; oubbo, ' a youth' ; murrawan,
'a lad' iu his first initiation; kumban-gari, ' a lad,' in another stage of
initiation; kibbara, ' a lad' fully initiated ; paigal, ' a man' ; mobeg,
' an old man.'

jj,. ^ Training for bush life begins very early. As soon as the little

. / ' one is able to toddle about, the father makes for the boy a

small spear to practise with at a mark ; the girl gets a st'ick,

aitd is taught to recognise food-roots and to dig them out, to find the larvse

of insects under the bark of a tree, and to kill lizards ; and the parents take

as much delight in this business as we do in teaching our children their

BIETH AND CHILDHOOD.

alphabet. If a river or lagoon is near the camp, the young ones soon learn
to be amphibious, and, when they become a little older and stronger, they
have much of their amusement in the water, chasing each other and sporting
in it in as lively a way as a Polynesian in the surf. The boy is soon able to
go out with his father on hunting expeditions, and learns all sorts of wood-
craft, and ere long is himself an expert hunter, and knows the whole of the
' taurai ' and its denizens and its products as familiarly as an English gentle-
man knows his own domain. Nor is the girl's education neglected. In
England, in other days, a young girl was taught to spin, but the black girl's
only attire being her own swarthy skin, her labour is somewhat different;
under her mother's eye she takes the hairs of the slain opossums, and, n
twirling them against her knee with the flat of her hand, rolls them into [Mr
string. This is useful in many ways ; for the women are expert netters, and
with it they make their bags ; and, where fishing is possible, it is used for
lines. One girl in a family is usually set apart as the fisher, and, to render
her little finger more sensitive to the line, the point of it is taken off at the
first joint. They also plait the human hair into long cords, and no moi'e
convincing proof of affection can be shown than when a man sends a cord
of his own hair with which to bind up the tresses of his friend. Fashion
among black men required that, on great occasions, the men's hair should be
done up into the shape of a cone on the head, and bound together with cords.

,-n , , Some writers, who consider our blacks as the lowest of the
^^ ,. human race, allege in proof of this that they are devoid of

•^ ' natural affection and unkind to children and parents. Certainlv

the killing of their children is an unnatural act, but, as I have already said,
that is not done of choice ; otherwise they are foolishly fond of their young off-
spring, and treat them with great indulgence, and patiently bear the burden
of them when sick or crippled. Then also, our blacks are very kind to the
aged and infirm. Many a time have I seen blind Boko led about by two other
men of the tribe as tenderly and carefully as if he were a little child — led by
the hand to the white man's door ; if any food was given to them. Boko
always got his share first ; if a glass was oilered, the top of the glass was
his. If a man is only an old man, he is honoured, and a word from him will
be an end of strife ; his very age, bringing with it experience, may qualify
him to be a chief, especially if he is also wise in counsel. If a marr is old
and infirm, and thus unable to hunt, the tribal law, to which they are all
trained, requires the young hunters to bring the very best of the food and
give it to him. Erom the pressure of a hard mode of life, the parents kill
their babes; but if a child dies, although only a few weeks old, mourning is
worn in the camp as if for an adult ; the mother and other relatives raise at
times during the day, and especially at sun-down, those ' keening' cries
which betoken the presence of death ; in excess of grief the women even
cut their heads till the blood streams down. Is it true then that our blacks
show no affectionate regard for young or old? It would be better if those
who slander them thus would only take care to be Avell informed before
they speak.
„. , Not only are they kind to children, they are kind to the dog, the

jLinaness. gjjjy ^jQjnestic animal they have. The women carry this kindness
to excess ; if a pup has lost its mother, they suckle and nurse it, and a black
man goes to sleep with a dog nestling in his bosom to keep him warm when
the fire has gone out. He gets a strong liking for his dogs and they for
him, and, if you meet him as he wanders through the bush, two or three dogs
are sure to be following at his heels. They are useful to him in hunting,
and so he likes them as companions.

THE ABOEIGINES OP WEW SOUTH WALES.

Ill.-IVIATURITY.

The Bora.

In Australia, boys and girls reach maturity at a somewhat earlier age
than in the colder latitudes o£ Europe and America. But to a black lad
maturity is a period of much anticipation ; for then he lays aside his state of
pupilage as his mother's boy, and enters the tribe, but only through certain
ceremonies of initiation which ' make a man' of him, and thereby give him the
qualification and the right to act as a member of the tribe. These ceremonies
are, in this part of Australia, called the Bora ; and, as that name has been
used in English books ever since the earliest settlements in this land, it has
established a prescriptive right to recognition, and is understood everywhere.
It seems to me, therefore, unnecessary to use any other name for it, merely
noting that in various places it has various other names. But, with some
minor differences in the mode of its administration, the Bora exists every-
where throughout Australia. I therefore conclude that it belongs to the
whole race, and is an essential attribute of its existence.

Now, before I go on to examine the ceremonies of the Bora, it may be
convenient to say here that the negroes of Upper Guinea had, and still have,
certain religious mysteries singularly like those of the Bora. These, like
the Bora, are ceremonies of initiation, and not only bring a youth to a
knowledge of his country's gods, but qualify him to commune with spirits
and to hold civil power and authority in the State ; all the uninitiated are
to him a profaniim mdgus, who, on the least transgression of his commands,
may be hurried away into the woods, there to be destroyed by the evil spirits
which the magical power of the initiated can command and control. As an
assembly for thus receiving the youths into the tribe is convened but four
or iive times in a century, and occupies a period of five years, only a small
proportion of the male population can acquire the qualification necessary
for power in the State. The king issues, when he pleases, an order for the
holding of this assembly. The preparations are committed to the care of '
those old men that are known to be best acquainted with the mysteries.
These choose suitable places in the woods, and make ready there every
appliance which can produce surprise, awe, and chilling fear on the minds of
novices. All women, children, and strangers are warned from the spot during
the ceremonies, and the novice believes that, if he reveals any of the secrets of
the grove, the spii-its, knowing his faithlessness and profanity, will bring
destruction upon him in some way or other. The country, for some three or
four miles around, is sacred and inviolable, and the evil spirits will carry off
those who intrude.

These and similar particulars are to be found' at greater length in Bishop
Hurd's Rites and Ceremonies, which was published eighty years ago — long
before the science of ethnography had come into existen'ee ; and if it were
needful, after so good an authority, to bring further evidence, we have it in
a more recent form in the books of Mons. P. du Chaillu, Mr. "W". Winwood
Eeade and others, on Equatorial and Central Africa. Prom these I now give
some quotations : — " In Equatorial Africa, before any are permitted to wear
clothes, marry, and rank in society as men and worsen, the young have to.
be initiated into certain mysteries. I received certain information on this
head from [myfriend] Mongilomba, after he had made me promise that I would
not put it in my book. He told me that ho was taken into a fetich house,
stripped, severely flogged, and plastered with goat dung, this ceremony, like
those of masonry, being conducted to the sound of music. Afterwards there
came, from behind a kind of screen or shrine, uncouth and terrible sounds

MATIJEITT.

sucli as he had never heard before. These, he was told, emanated from a spirit
called TJkuk. He afterwards brought to me the instrument with which the
fetich man makes the noise. It was a whistle made of hollowed mangrove
wood, about 2 inches in length, and covered at one end with a scrap of bat's
wing. Por a period of five days after initiation, the novice wears an apron
of.diy palm leaves, which I have frequently seen.

"The initiation of the girls is performed by elderly females, who call them-
selves ' ngembi.' They go into the forest, clear a space, sweep the ground
carefully, come back to the town, and build a sacred hut, which no male may
enter. They return to the clearing in the forest, taking with them the
'igonji' or novice. It is necessary that she should have never been to that
place before, and that she fast during the whole of the ceremony, which
lasts three days. All this time a fire is kept burning in the wood. From
morning to night, and night to morning, a 'ngembi' sits beside it, .and feeds
it, singing with a cracked voice, ' The fire will never die out.' The third
night is passed in the sacred hut; the 'igonji' is rubbed with black, red,
and white paints, and as the men beat drums outside, she cries ' Okanddl yo,
JO, JO,' which reminds one of the 'evohe' of the ancient bacchanals. The
ceremonies performed in the hut and in the wood are kept secret from the
men, and I can say but little about them. Mongilomba had evidently been
playing the spy, but was very reserved upon the subject.

"During the novitiate which succeeds initiation, the girls are taught religious
dances, the men are instructed in the science of fetich. It is thea that they
are told that there are certain kinds of food which are forbidden to their
clan. One clan may not eat crocodile, another hippopotamus, nor a third
buffalo. These are relics of the old animal worship. The spirit Ukuk (o;-
M'wetyi, as he is called in the Shekani country) is supposed to live in the
bowels of the earth, and to come to the upper world when, there is any
business to peform. He is then supposed to dwell in the fetich house, which
is built in a peculiar form, covered with dry plantain leaves, and is always
kept perfectly dark. Thence issue strange sounds like the growling of a
a tiger, which make the women and children shudder and run to their houses.
When the mangrove tube is thus heard to be at work, the initiated repair to
the house, and a 'lodge ' is held."

Farther south, the Kafiirs have similar ceremonies in connection with the
circumcision of boys. The main features are these: — "This national rite is
performed at the age of puberty, and partakes partly of a civil and partly of
a religious character. As a civil rite it introduces boys into a state of man-
hood, and as a religious rite it imposes upon them the responsibility of con-
forming to all the rites and ceremonies of their superstition. Circumcision
is generally performed about the time of the new year. A number of neigh-
bouring kraals club together, and arrange that the boys thereof shall be cir-
cumcised together. A hut is erected for that purpose about half a mile from
the most central kraal. To this hut the boys are taken, having been placed
in charge of a person appointed to that office, and under whose charge they
continue during the whole time of their initiation, and which state of initia-
tion is called xibukweta, the boys themselves being termed abalcweta. Here
the ceremony is performed, after which healing plants are applied, together
with certain charms, especial care being taken to preserve the whole of these,
to be burned at the appointed time, in order that they may not fall into the
hands of sorcerers or witches, who might make use of them, as uhuti, to
bewitch the boys. During the whole time of their initiation, which generally
lasts until the Kaffir corn crops are reaped, the boys form an entirely

THE ABORIGINES OE NEW SOrTH WALES.

separate community ; they sleep in one hut, and no others are allowed to eat
with them. Another heathenish custom connected with this rite is the
tthutsliila, which consists in attiring themselves with the leaves of the wild
date, in the most fantastic manner ; and, thus attired, they visit each of the
kraals to which they belong in rotation, for the purpose of dancing. After
all this the dbahweta are taken to the river to be washed ; for, during the
whole time of their separation, they smear themselves all over with white clay.
The whole of the men of the kraals to which they belong being assembled,
the boys are chased by them, and obliged to run as fast as possible all the
way to the river. After having sufficiently performed their ablutions, they
return to their huts, when everything connected with their ubulcweta,
including their ' karosses,' bandages, &c., is collected inside the hut, and the
whole is burned. The boys, having been smeared with fat and red clay, are
presented with new ' karosses.' They then proceed in a body to the kraal
which has the charge of them, all of them being esceedingly careful not to
look back upon the burning hut, lest some supernatural evil should befall
them ; and, in order more effectually to avoid this, they are careful to cover
their heads all over with ' karosses.' The nest day, all the men assemble in the
cattle-fold, and a grand feast ensues, at which the ceremonies of ulcuyala
and uleusolca are performed. The iirst consists in discourses or lectures by
the men to the novices on their duties as members of society, as they have
now entered into the important state of manhood. These duties, they are
told, consist in obeying their chief, defending their tribe from all enemies,
and in conforming to all the customs, and fulfilling all the rites and ceremo-
nies of their forefathers. They are also exhorted to be careful in providing
for their parents and all others committed to their charge, and to exercise a
spirit of liberality towards all their neighbours and friends. The uhusoha
consists in presents being made to them, by the men assembled, of cattle,
'assagais,' &c., in order to give them a start in life. They are then pro-
nounced to be men, and are admitted to all the privileges of that important
state.

" During the period of their seclusion, the novices are distinguished by
having their faces and legs smeared with a kind of white clay, and their
' karosses' left undressed with the usual preparation of red-ochre. Their
appearance in the presence of married women is strictly prohibited. It is
accordingly no uncommon thing to see a party oF abakweta take instant
ilight to some hiding-place, while a woman of that class passes by. No such
interdict exists with regard to the unmarried.

" One of the most striking proofs of the amazing power which the chief,
TJtahaka, acquired over the minds of the Amazulu was that he was able to
induce his people to abandon this custom. This was done solely for military
purposes, as it migKt sometimes interfere with, or prevent, his ambitious
designs.

" Ntonjane is the initiatory rite analogous to circumcision, by which girls
are introduced into womanhood ; it is partly of a civil and partly of a
superstitious nature. The girl is placed in a separate hut, and none but
females are allowed to see her ; and, during the time of her separation,
which lasts from seven to ten days, neither she nor any of lier female
companions are allowed to use milk. A festival ensues at which much
license prevails."

In Eiji — also a Melanesian region — there are ceremonies of initiation
similar to those of the Australian Bora ; and these are called the ' Nanga '
custom, but it existed only among certain tribes. An oblong space of

MATUEITT,

considerable size was surronnded with low stone walls, and then divided into
three enclosures by two parallel walls running across ; each of these low
dividing stone walls had in the middle a break in it like a door-sill, which could
he easily stepped over. The farthest of these enclosures was the most sacred,
and there was set in it the 'kava' bowl. In the open ground beyond that,
and outside the encircling wall, was a bell-roofed house, called the ' sacred
temple.' On 'Nanga' occasions, the people are of five kinds — (L) the
women, children, and uninitiated, who must keep outside the enclosure
altogether ; children must not even play near it ; (2) the young men about to
be initiated for the first time ; (3) those who have passed through one Nanga
ceremony ; (4) those who have attended two Nangas, and have thus become
full members ; (5) the old men or elders who have charge of the sacred Nanga
and preside at the ceremonies. The rite is celebrated at long intervals, and
intimation is given, perhaps two years beforehand, that all may be ready.
But famine or war may intervene and delay the holding of the Nanga ; hence
youths long past puberty, and even bearded men, may come to be initiated.
When at last the time for the Nanga has come, great preparations are made
and food collected in quantities, for the men must not retura to the
villages while the ceremonies last ; a pathway is carefully cleared from the
village to the Nanga enclosure, and along this the novices advance, all clean
shaven ; they come on in single file, treading in the footsteps of an old priest,
who goes before them with his carved staif of office in hand ; he leads them
into the middle enclosure — the ' Great Nanga,' — where the other celebrants
are already seated, chanting a song like the low murmuring of the surf on a
distant coral reef. The novices are then conducted to huts near by, which
have been made ready for them. Thus ends the first day. On each of the
three days that follow, they are led from the huts to the ' Great Nanga' by
the same guide and in the same manner, and then return to their huts. But
on the fifth day, when they have come as before, they find the Nanga
empty ; the procession now stops, and, from the forest on all sides around,
come screams of parrots and booming noises which frighten the novices ;
their priestly friend now lead them into the farthest or most sacred Nanga ;
there they see lying on the ground in front of them the bodies of men,
covered with gashes and blood, and their bowels protruding ; beyond these
is the high priest, sitting alone and looking at the comers with a fixed stare.
Stepping over the prostrate bodies, the young men follow their guide and
stand in a row before the high priest; he now utters a yell, and the dead
men — who represent the spirits of ancestors — rise up and go to the river and
wash themselves clean. These men then ornament themselves, and come back
walking with a rhythmical movement and a solemn chant ; they place them-
selves in front of the young men, and silence ensues. Pour old priests now
appear; the first carries a cooked, ham wrapped in leaves, but his hands do
not touch the food ; the second carries baked pork in a similar manner ;
the third has a cup full of water; and the fourth bears a napkin
of native cloth. The food and water are applied to the lips of each
of the novices in succession, and he takes a little. The fourth priest
wipes the mouth of each with his napkin. The chief priest now instructs
them as to their duties, and enjoins them not to divulge anything of what
they have seen or done. The young have thus passed through their first
novitiate ; in token of welcome, presents are now given to them by all the
celebrants. On the following morning the women are summoned, and,
according to custom, they crawl on hands and knees through the first two
enclosures into the presence of the chief priest and the elders. The chief
priest sprinkles them with water from the sacred bowl, and makes a prayer

10 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

to tlie ancestral spirits for tlie mothers and their children. The women now
return in the same way as they came. When they have emerged from the
enclosures, the men there rush upon them, and a scene o£ much licence ensues.
The initiated of the first and second year are now daubed all over with black
paint, and in each hand they carry a green bough. The old priest puts
himself at the head of them, and all who have been participants in the
ceremonies go down to the river and wash themselves clean ; the chief
priest, seated on the river bank, now further instructs them — tells them
about the customs of the tribe, and their own duties as tribesmen ; that
they miist not eat the best of the yams, but must be content with the com-
moner kinds of animal and vegetable food, and must bring the fresh-water
fish and the eels to the old men; any violation of these rules will be
punished by the gods. This ends the rite of initiation.

The vale iatnbu — ' the sacred house' — is used on special occasions for- the
rite of circumcision. When any great man is dangerously ill a family
council agrees that his own or his brother's son shall be circumcised as a
' soro,' or propitiatory offering, for his recovery. Other lads offer themselves
for circumcision along with him. They are there circumcised, and their
foreskins are carried by the priest in cleft reeds to the Nanga, and the priest,
holding these in his hands, offers them to the gods, and prays for the sick
man's recovery.

I have quoted these examples at considerable length, because they all
throw important light on the ceremonies of our Bora, and they all belong to
black races like our own. I now return to the African ceremonies.

The essential idea prominent in the negro ceremony of initiation is that of
death and a new birth — a regeneration. Hence the catechumen, before he
proceeds to the groves, gives away all his property and effects, as if about to
die to the world, and, on the completion of his novitiate, when he returns to
his kindred, he pretends to forget all his past life, and to know neither father
nor mother, nor relations, nor former friends. His is a new life. His whole
aspect is that of a new man, for he is now differently attired, and, as a badge
of his new rank, he wears a collar of leopards' teeth round his neck. During
the five years of his training, the probationer is attended by some old and
experienced devotees, who act as his instructors. They teach him the ritual
of their religion, various songs and pieces of poetry, mostly in praise of their
chief god, and, in particular, he learns from them a dance of a frenzied kind.
While this course of education is proceeding, the king frequently visits the
groves, and examines the candidates. When their training is sufficiently
advanced, they receive each a new name, and, as a token of their regeneration,
several long wounds, which afterwards become permanent scars, are made on
their neck and shoulders. They are now conducted to some retired place at
a distance, where women may attend them. Here, their religious education
being already complete, they are instructed in those jn-inciples of morals and
politics which will make them useful as members of the State, and fit to act
as judges in civil and criminal causes. This done, they leave the groves and
their tutors, and, with their new badges of perfection upon them, they exhibit
their magical powers in public by means of a stick driven into the ground,
with a bundle of reeds at its top, or they repair to the public assemljly, and
join in the solemn dances of the wise men or in the duties of civic rulers.

The aboriginal races of India also have observances similar to those of the
African negroes ; for, among some of the Dravidian tribes of Central India,
"persons desiring to enter the priesthood are required to retire for some days to
the jungle, and commune in solitude with the deity. Before they are confirmed

MATIJEITT. 11

in their office they are expected to perforin some marvellous act as evidence
of their having acquired superhuman power." In another tribe, the novice
" retires to the jungle, and there remains alone and v^ithout clothing for
eight days, during which time he performs certain purificatory rites. On
the eighth day he returns, and enters upon the discharge of his duties."
So far the negroes of Upper G-uinea and the tribes of the Dekkan.

I now turn to Australia ; and there, when a boy approaches the age of
puberty, a feeling of restless anticipation spreads over his mind, for he
knows that his opening manhood has brought him to the threshold of
ceremonies of mysterious import, through which he is to be formally received
into the tribe, and thereby to acquire the dignity of a man. The rites of
initiation are important, numerous, and prolonged ; and, as his admission
does not Concern himself or his family merely but the whole tribe, these
observances call together large assemblages, and are the occasion of general
rejoicing.

This assembly — the most solemn and unique in the tribal life — is called the
Bora. The whole proceedings are essentially the same everywhere in their
general features and teachings, but the details vary among the different
tribes. Therefore, instead of a separate narrative for each tribe, I will
endeavour to present a full view of the Bora, taking one tribal mode as the
basis of my description, but introducing from the other tribes such features
as appear to me needed to complete the significance of the. ceremonies.

The chiefs of the tribule know that some boys are of an age to be initiated ;
they accordingly summon to them the public messenger or herald, and bid him
inform the other sections of the tribe that a Bora will be held at a certain
time and place, the time being near full moon, and the place being usually a
well-known Bora-ground ; they also send him away to invite the neighbouring
tribes to attend. This invitation is readily accepted; for, although the tribes
may be at variance with each other, universal brotherhood prevails among
the blacks at such a time as that. Tlie day appointed for the gathering is,
perhaps, a month or two distant, and the intervening time is filled with
busy preparations by the leading men of the novices' tribule. They select a
suitable piece of ground near water if possible, and level for convenience
in sitting or lying on. Two circular enclosures are then formed and cleared
of all timber, even of every blade of grass — a larger and a smaller, with a
straight track connecting them. The smaller and sacred circle is about a
quarter of a mile up the ridge, and out of sight of the other, and in those
that I have examined the path between is due east and west, or nearly so.
The trees that grow around the smaller circle they carve, perhaps up to
twenty feet from the ground, with curious emblematical devices and figures.
The circuit of each ring is defined by a slight mound of earth laid around,
and, in the centre of the larger one, they fix a short pole with a bunch of emu
feathers on the top of it. When these arrangements are completed the
ceremonies should begin, but there is often considerable delay. The cause
of such delay will appear from the words of a friend of mine : — " We had
some young blacks in our house, fifty years ago, and the older blacks
would come to us, and ask us to allow these lads to go off for a time to be
made ' boombat.' Sometimes the boys would be away for the best part of a
year. Sometimes the old men would bring back the boys in a short time, saying
that things were not ready for the Bora, that the other blacks were slow in
coming up, and so forth, and that the ceremonies could not go on then ; but
usually all the men, the lads, and the ' jins ' went off together on their way to
the appointed place of meeting. At night time, whereyer they camped, several

12 THE ABOEIGINES OE NEW SOUTH WALES.

of the men would go out in different directions and make friglitsome
noises all around, scaring the ' jins ' almost out of their wits, and awing
the boys. Thus matters would go on until they reached the hig camp
of assembly." A large concourse is there. The men stand with their
bodies painted in stripes of colour, chieily red and white. The women,
who are permitted to be present at the opening ceremony only, are lying
prone on the ground all round the larger ring, and are covered all over with
rugs and cloaks.

The boy, painted red all over— I say boy, but several boys may be initiated
at once,— the boy is brought forward, and made to lie down in the middle of
the ring, and covered with an opossum rug. Such of the old men as have
been appointed masters of the ceremonies now begin to throw him into a
state of fear and awe by sounding an instrument called tirrikoty, similar to
what an English boy calls a ' bull-roarer.' In Central Africa, a whistle is
used similarly as a sacred instrument, and something similar seems also to
have been used in the mysteries of ancient G-reece. In Australia the men
use tirrikoty on all occasions when they wish to frighten the women and the
boys, who cower with fear whenever they hear it. " On one occasion," said
a friend to me, " a number of blacks were working in the corn-field, near the
Barrington Eiver. A little boy began to sound his toy ' bull-roarer.' The
blacks all took to their heels. A few, however, rushed up to him and said, ' Bail
('no') you "do that ; that's one of our gods.' " It is not lawful for anyone to
handle it except those who have been initiated at the Bora. It is made of a
piece of thin wood or of the bark of a tree. It is 9 to 12 inches long, and is
sometimes shaped and marked so as to make it look like a fish. The roaring
sound is supposed-to be the voice of a dreaded evil spirit, who prowls about
the camp of the blacks at night and carries off and tears and devours those
he can seize. Wh^n the performers think that the ' boombat ' (so they call
the novice) has been sufficiently impressed, tirrikoty ceases to speak. They
then raise the boy from the ground, and set him in the middle of the ring in
such a manner that his face is turned towards the cleared track which leads
to the circle of imagery. Then an old man comes forward, breathes strongly
in his face, and makes him cast his eyes upon the ground ; for in this humble

attitude he must continue for some days.
I,
Two other old men next take the boy by the arms and lead him along the
track, and set him in the middle of the other enclosure. As soon as this is
done the women rise from their prostrate position, and begin to dance and
sing. The Murringgari tribe, on our south-east coast, place along this track
or path some figures, moulded in earth, of various animals (totems), and one
of Dharamulan, a spirit-god whom they reverence. Before each of these
figures the devotees have a dance ; and a ' karaji,' medicine man or doctor,
brings up, through his mouth, apparently from his stomach, the'joea' or
magic of the totem before which they then stand. Eor the porcupine, he shows
stuff like chalk, for the kangaroo stuff like glass, and so on. Meanwhile,
the boy has been sitting in the smaller circle with downcast eyes. He is told
to rise, and is led in succession to each of the carved trees around it, and is
made to look up for a moment at the carvings on them, and, while he does so,
the old men raise a shout. When he has come to know all the carvings
sufiGciently, the men give him a new name, which must not be revealed to the
uninitiated, and they hand to him a little bag containing one or more small
stones of crystal quartz. This bag he will always carry about his person, and
the stones must not be shown to the uninitiated on pain of death. This con-
cludes the first part of the performance.

MATURITY. 13

A fire is kept constantly burning in the centre of tliis upper ring. The
boy is made to lie within the ring prone on the ground for weeks, it may be,
getting only a very little food and water now and then. When he wishes
to go outside, the old men carry him over the raised border of the ring. One
black boy told me that, when he was initiated, he joined the assembled crowd
in the month of August, and did not get away till about Christmas. ' When
the men in charge of the sacred circle at last bade him rise from his recum-
bent position, he said he was so weak that he staggered and fell. He says
that he was kept two or three weeks among the women at the lower circle,
because the other young men from the tribe were not ready, and had not come
up ; that the women thei'e lie flat, covered up with opossum cloaks, sheets of
bark, and the like, and dare not look up ; that the ' boombat' is among them,
painted all over with ruddle ; that a black man keeps running round the
outside of the circle sounding ij>r«7coi'!/; that the 'boombat' is then taken
from among the women into the centre of the circle and kept there a short
time — perhaps a quarter of an hour — and is then led away to the upper
circle, where the old men are. All this while the ' boombat' keeps his eyes
cast upon the ground, and must not look up. On approaching the sacred
circle, he was told now to look up at each of the marked trees and then
look down again. My informant said: "When I was put within the
ring I was made lie down, covered over, and kept lying there on the
ground for three months ; several times I tried to peep out, but nearly
lost my life for it, for they tl^reatened to kill me with spears ; other boys
are not kept so long as three months ; the old men regulate the time
according to the strength of the boy." All this is additional evidence
corroborating the information I got from other quarters ; for a considerable
portion of what I now tell about the Bora is new, and comes from my own
investigations.

The ' boombat' is next conveyed, blindfolded, to a large camp, at a distance
of several miles, no woman being near, and food is given to him, which he
eats still with his eyes east down ; here they keep him for eight or ten days,
and teach him their tribal lore by showing him their dances and their songs ;
these he learns, especially one aong, of which I c*iu tell nothing further than
that it is important for the boy to know it. These songs, they say, were
given to them by Bayemai, the great Creator. At night, during this period,
the ' boombat' is set alone in secluded and darksome places, and all around
him the men make hideous noises, at which he must not betray the least sign
of fear. At some part of the ceremony a sacred wand is shown to him. Of
this, Eidley says : — "This old man, Billy, told me, as a favour, Vi'hat other
blacks had withheld as a mystery too sacred to be disclosed to a white man,,
that ' dhurumbulum,' a stick or wand, is exhibited at the Bora, and that the
sight of it inspires the initiated with manhood. This sacred wand was the
gift of Baiamai. The ground on which the Bora is celebrated is Baiamai's
ground. Billy believes the Bora will be kept up always all over the country ;,
such was the command of Baiamai."

Another conspicuous part of the inner Bora customs is the knocking out
of one or more of the upper front teeth of the ' boombat.' This is effected
by a smart blow on a wooden punch applied to the teeth. But the older and
more correct way seems to have been for one of the old men to apply his
lower teeth to the upper front teeth of the young man ; if that failed, the
mallet and punch were used. " On one occasion," says my friend, " a black
boy in our service came back to us from the Bora ; I observed that his tooth
was not out, and I asked him why. ' Oh,' said he, ' old Boney no good ; he
tried three times and nearly broke his own teeth ; and so he gave it up.' '"

14 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

As to the tootli itself, one account says that it is given to the lad's mother,
and she afterwards burns it ; another says that it is conveyed^ from one
sub-tribe to another until it has made the circuit of the whole tribe ; on its
return, it is given to the owner or kept by the head man. This tooth-
breaking, however, is not practised by some of the larger tribes ; but, instead
of it, there is circumcision or the cutting off of the hair.

All these formalities being now completed, the ' boombat's ' probation is
at an end. They now proceed, all of them together, to some large waterhole,
and, jumping in, men and boys, they wash off the colouring matter from
their bodies, amid much glee and noise and merriment, and when they have
come out of the water they paint themselves white.

Meanwhile, the women who have been called to resume their attendance,
have kindled a large iire not far off, and are lying around it, with their faces
on the ground and their bodies covered as at the first ; the two old men who
were the original initiators bring the boy at a run towards the fire, followed by
all the others, with voices indeed silent, but making a noise by beating their
' bumarangs ' together ; the men join hands and form a ring round the fire,
and one old man runs round the inside of the i-ing beating a shield. \A.
woman, usually the boy's own mother, then steps within the ring, and,
catching him under the arms, lifts him from the ground once, sets him down,
and then retires ; every man present, the boy included, now jumps upon the
decaying red embers, until the fire is extinguished.

In corroboration of all this, I give the following statement made to me by
a friend who, from his boyhood, was familiar with the Kurringgai tribe and
its habits : — ■

" After the ceremonies at the upper circle are completed the men remove
to a flat piece of ground a long way off ; here a fire has been kindled at a dis-
tance of perhaps 100 yards from a deep water-course, in which a considerable
number of blacks can hide. The ' bbombat,' that is, the newly initiated lad,
is carried to this spot blindfolded, and he is persuaded that he gets there by
flying through the air ; ' but,' said one ofthemto me, 'Ilobked out from under
my bandage, and I saw I wasnot flying.' Th^flre on the flat is a large one ;
it has been kindled early in the morning, and the ' jins ' seat themselves on
an elevated slope near by as spectators of what is to follow. Afavouredfew
of their white friends may also sit among them. After a while, a party of men,
painted white, red, yellow, emerge from their concealment in the ravine, and
run into view from one quarter, and advance towards the fire ; all the while
each man beats together two weapons in rhythm, two 'bumarangs,' or a spear
apd a ' bumarang,' or a spear and a club, and soon. They come on in single file
to the sound of this music, and, when near the fire, they move on and on till they
form a complete circle around it ; they then face inwards, .make a loud crashing
noise simultaneously — and disperse. Upon this, another band, from another
quarter, similarly come in and do likewise. When all the bands have thus
encompassed the fire in succession, the ' jins ' arise, descend from the heights,
and lay themselves prone in a circle round the fire, and are carefully covered
up. -n-ith cloaks, blankets, and the like ; they dare not look up, for several
blacks with spears in hand are running round outside the circle of prostrate
women, ready to kill them if they should dare to look. A white wom.an, who,
on one occasion, had come with her black servant to see the sights, was
compelled to go and lie down also. When the women are all properlv
placed, a band of blacks, perhaps a hundred in number, with the ' boombats"'
among them, suddenly come out of the ravine. The 'boombats' have had their
hair cut short, and can thus be recognised. All the men in this band have

HATUEITT. 15

weapons in their two hands, and strite them together as before, but their
weapons, their bodies, and their hair are all painted white. They too approach
the fire shouting, 'boom,' 'boom,' 'boom,' and moving their bodies to and fro,
as in a 'karabari' dance. When they have formed themselves into a complete
circle, they join hands, and move round the fire two or three times. The women
are still lying on the ground between the circle and the fire. They now rise
up at command, and, with head bent, they pass outwards under the out-
stretched arms. Then the men in white — •' white as cockatoos ' — take hold of
the ' boombats,' rush in, all leap tipon the fire, which, by this time, has died
down considerably, raising a column of smoke of dust, until the fire is wholly
stamped out. The men in white now take the ' boombats ' back to the ravine,
and leave them there in charge of two of their relatives. The men in white
return to their post, and the previous performers, with the party-coloured
bodies, rush in upon the white men ; a general conflict ensues — apparently
a real fight, for ' bumarangs' and other weapons are thrown about — but this
does not last long."

After all this is over, the two men — the father and the uncle perhaps — to
whom the ' boombats ' were committed take them away into the thick forest,
and keep them there for many weeks, training them, and testing their fitness
for tribal occupations. When the young man is at last allowed to join his
kindred, he is addressed as ' boombat,' and does not get his tribal name till
some time after.

Thus end the ceremonies of the Bora. The youth become a man ; for his
initiation and his instruction are over. But, although these are the formalities
observed in admitting a youth into the tribe, yet, in the Bora, as in free-
masonry, the novice does not become a full member all at once, but must
pass through several grades, and these are obtained by attending a certain
number of Boras. Here also, as in Africa, restrictions as to food are imposed,
which are relaxed from time to time, until at last the youth is permitted to
eat anything he may find. Thus the process of qualifying for a full member-
ship may extend over two or three years. Then he becomes an acknow-
ledged member of the tribe, undertakes all the duties of membership, and
has a right to all its privileges.

I have thus finished my description of the Bora ceremonies, and with them
correspond the similar observances in Africa, in India, and in Fiji, of which
I gave a condensed account as a sort of introduction to the Bora.

Now when I cast my eye over the Bora and its regulated forms, I feel
myself constrained to ask, "What does all this mean?" I, for one, cannot
believe that the Bora, with all its solemnities — for the rites were sacred, and
the initiated were bound not to divulge what they had seen and done —
is a meaningless, self-developed thing ; still less that the same thing can
have developed spontaneously in Australia, in Fiji, in India, and in farthest
Africa. I prefer to see in it a symbolism covering ancestral beliefs, a
■symbolism intelligible enough to the Kushite race at first, but now little
understood and yet superstitiously observed by their Australian descendants.

Accordingly, I now proceed to what I regard as the most important part
of this inquiry ; for I shall attempt to show that, in many respects, the Bora
corresponds with the religious beliefs and practices of the ancient world.
If I can prove that the germ ideas which underlie the Australian Bora, as it
has been, and still is, celebrated among our indigenea, are the same as those
in many religions of antiquity, and that these same ideas present themselves
in ceremonies of similar import among nations now widely separated in place,

16 THE ABOEiaiNES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

I think tliat we hare then established a strong presumption that there is a
common source from which all these things have sprung, and that there is a
community of origin from which this community of belief springs.

I now offer such analogies as my limited knowledge permits me to refer to : —
(A.) In the Bora there are two circles ; the one is less sacred, for the
women may be present there, although only on the outskirts ; in it certain
preparatory things are done to bring the ' boombat's ' mind into a fit state
of reverential awe for the reception of the teaching in the other circle — the
adytum, fhe^ pmietralia, — where the images of the gods are to be seen. The
women and the uninitiated must not approach this other circle ; it is thrice
holy ; " ])rocul este, profani.'"

(«.) In the earliest religions, the circle is the invariable symbol of the sun,
the bright and pure one, from whose presence darkness and every evil thing
must flee away. Thus we have the disc as the symbol of the sun-god in
Egypt, Chaldiea, Assyria, Persia, India, China, and elsewhere. This fact is
so well known that it is needless to multiply examples. Those who are
within the circle are safe from the powers of evil. The sacredness of the
circle in those early ages is obvious from the Chaldsean name (G-enesis, xxxi,
47) " the circle of witness" — a name given to a solemn compact of friendship,
witnessed by that celestial orb which looks down on and observes all the
deeds of men. In Persia, at this day, in the southern parts of it, which were
originally inhabited by a Hamite race of a negroid type, there are to be seen
on the roadsides large circles of stones, which the tradition of the country
regards as set there by the Caous, a race of giants, that is, of aboriginals.
Then, in the classic nations, both in Grreece and Italy, some of the most
famous and ancient temples were circular in form, especially the Pantheon
at Athens, and at Eome the temple of Vesta, the goddess of the sun-given,
eternal fire. At Rome, also, for a hundred years from the foundation of the
city, the worship of the gods was celebrated in the open air (c/'. the Bora),
often in sacred groves ; and there also the temple of Janus, the oldest and
most venerated of the iioman gods, was merely a sacred enclosure on which
no building stood till the time of the First Punic War. The pomosrium, or
circuit of the walls of Home, was a sacred ring, and the Circus was conse-
crated to the sun. In Britain too, the fire-worship of the Druids led them
to construct ring-bemples in various places, and especially at Stonehenge,
where there are two rings, as in the Bora, but concentric. Even the rude
Laplanders, who are sprung from the same Turanian race, which was one of
the earliest elements in the population of Babylonia, make two circles when
they sacrifice to the sun, and surround them with willows ; they also draw a
white thread through the ear of the animal to be sacrificed ; and white, as we
shall presently see, is the sun's livery.

(B.) In the Bora, the two rings, both of them sacred, communicate with
each other by means of a narrow passage, in which are earthen represen-
tations of certain objects of worship ; the upper contains the images* or
symbols of the gods carved on trees, and the novice is so placed in the outer
ring that he faces the passage and the shrine of the gods, and thus faces the
east ; for this passage, as I have said, runs east and west.

(c.) The inner shrine is an arrangement common to all religions. At
Babylon, in the temple of Bel us, which was built in stages, the worshipper
had to pass through these seven stages of Sabaeism before he reached the
shrine. This was the topmost of all, and contained a golden image of the

* One tree, at a Bora ground wliicli I examined, had on it a carving of an iguana,
flanked by two men, its guardians.

MATTJEITT. 17

god. Each of these stages was devoted to the worship of one of the Babylonian
gods. So also in the Bora, the worshipper advances bj' stages along the
passage leading from the one circle to the other, and pays his devotions to
each of the images in succession. In Greece and in Home, the roofed temples
were commonly arranged in two parts, an inner and an outer, and the statue
of the god was so placed that a worshipper, entering by the external door,
saw it right before him. At the very ancient temple of Dodoncean Zeus, in
G-reece, the god was supposed to reside in an oak-tree, and it is quite possible
that the xoanon, or wooden image of the god, was here, as in other grove
worship, merely a carved piece of wood, as in the IJora ; and in this sense
Pestus gives fustis decorticatus as an equivalent for delubrum. The student
of Biblical archaeology will also remember the Asherah of the Israelite
idolaters — the consort of the sun god Baal. This was a pillar or statue of
the goddess, but of wood, for it could be cut down and burned. Such a
pillar our blackfellows also have been known to erect ; for, on one occasion,
several men of a tribule, and at a spot which is well known to me, were seen
to cut down a soft cedar. This happened, too, while a Bora was going on.
They dressed it with their hatchets, and cut one end of it into the rude
figure of a head and face. They then carried it some distance down the river
to a sandy spot, and setting it up there like a pillar, they danced in a circle
around it. This was certainly an act of worship, the same as many other
acts of worship in the heathen world. A friend of mine knows of a similar
incident that occurred on another of our rivers, far ofl: from this one. Was
it merely a happy thought on the part of these blackfellows, or an undesigned
coincidence, that led them to do these things ? or was it a portion of an
ancestral form of worship, brought from other lands ?

(0.) In the Bora, the novice in the outer circle has his body painted all
over with red, but at the close of his novitiate, he washes in a pool, is thereby
cleansed, and then paints himself all white. The other celebrants paint
themselves red and white for the ceremony. They, too, at the close wash in
a pool, and retire white like the ' boombat.' This transformation is to them
a cause of much rejoicing.

(c.) Among the black races the colour red was the symbol of evil ; and so
Plutarch tells us that the Egyptians sacrificed only red bullocks to Typhon,
and that the animal was reckoned unfit for this sacrifice if a single white or
black hair could be found on it. In certain of their festivals, the Egyptians
assailed with insults and revilinga any among them who happened to have red
hair, and the people of Coptos there had a custom of throwing an ass down
a precipice because of its red colour. The god Typhon was to the Egyptians
the embodied cause of everything evil, malignant, destructive, man-hating,
in the economy of nature {cf. the Persian Ahriman), just as Osiris, the
bright and beneficent sun, was an emblem of all that was good. In the
Levitical law, the new heifer was a sin-offering for the Israelites, probably
with some reference to the ideas of the Egyptians about that colour. In India,
Ganesa, the lord of all mischievous and malignant spirits, is symbolised by
red stones; and the Cingalese, when they are sick, offer a red cock to the
evil spirit that has caused the sickness. The blacks of Congo wash and
anoint a corpse, and then paint it red; and their black brethren in Mada-
gascar, when they are celebrating the rite of circumcision, never wear any-
thing red about them, lest the child should bleed to death. The negroes of
Tipper Guinea — far enough removed from Australian Borus to prevent
even a suspicion of borrowing — make a similar use of the colours red and
white ; for, in Benin there, when a woman is first initiated into the rites

18 THE AEOEIG-INES OP NEW SOUTH WALES.

which the Babylonians sanctioned in honour of their goddess Mulitta, she
seats herself on a mat in a public place, and covers her head, shoulders, and
arms, with the blood of a fowl ; she then retires for her devotions, and,
these being finished, she washes laerself, returns, and is rubbed all over with
white chalk where the blood has been. The youna; ladies of Congo (also a
black country) have a similar custom ; but they besmear their faces and
necks with red paint.

In Australia, those who pass through the Bora paint themselves white at
its close. Everywhere in Australia there is the belief that the black man,
when he is dead and buried, still lives ; but he is then white. Our indi-
genes say, " Black man dead jumps up white fellow;" hence a white man is
called ' wunda, ' a word which originally described only the black man in
his spirit state after death. The father of a friend of mine was the first
white man to enter, some sixty years ago, the territory of a black tribute
near to where I lived. It so happened that the tribe had just lost their
chief by death ; and so, as the white man whom they saw coming over the
crest of the hill towards their camp bore some physical resemblance to the
deceased, they soon got to hail him as their chief returned to them in the
' wunda ' state, and to this hour they claim that white man's son as one of
themselves, a brother !

Now, in the ancient rituals, white was the colour sacred to the sun — the
benign god before whom darkness flies away. In India, white agates rep-
resent Siva, the eternal cause of all blessings ; in Persia, white horses were
sacred to the sun ; in Celtic Britain, some of the Welsh people, even now,
whiten their houses to keep away devils ; and so with many other examples
in Aryan lands. "I said to King Sewa at Talaber, on the Niger,' so writes
Mr. W. Winwood Eeade, ' if I die may my»blood be on your head.' 'Ah,
take care ; take care,' said he, ' you have had evil thoughts against me, and
that is why you are ill. Do you see that fetich behind you ? That is a>
spirit who protects me from your evil designs.' I looked round, and saw
in a corner by the bed, some long sticks, which, oddly enough, I had never
noticed before. They were daubed all over with some clammy white stuff,
and Sewa, it seems, ha.d ordered this fetich to be put into the house in case
I tried to bewitch him."

In these senses, the ' boombat ' enters the Bora with the brand of
Typhon upon him, exposed to all evil influences, to disease and death from
animals, men, and spirits ; but, after he has made the acquaintance of his-
father's gods, and has learned the sacred songs and dances of his tribe, he
comes forth another man ; he washes away the badge of darkness and evil,
and assumes the livery of the children of light.

This felt subjection to unseen evil and aspirations for deliverance from it
in the minds of our native race, is not only natural to man everywhere, but
was a marked feature in the whole system of Akkadian magic ; for those old
Chaldfeans believed that innumerable spirits, each with a personality, were
distributed throughout nature ; sometimes in union with animate objects,
sometimes separately. Existing everywhere, they had both an evil and a
good aspect — at one time favourable, at another unfavourable, controlling
both life and death ; regulating all phenomena, whether beneficial or des-
tructive, both of air and earth, fire and water. A dual spirit — bad and
good — was allocated to each of the celestial bodies, and to each living being.
A constant warfare existed and was keenly maintained between the bad and
the good ; and, according as the one principle or the other held sway, so did
blessings or disasters descend upon nature and upon man. Hence the value

MATUEITT. 19

of religious rites sucla as the Bora ; for tlie due observance of these, repeated
from time to time, gave, for a while at least, the victory to the good spirits,
and brought blessings to the faithful. Thus, then, I explain the red colour
of the novice at the Bora, the red and white of the celebrants, and the white
colour of the men when the service was completed.

(D.) fiidley says that the Bora is Bayemai's ground. He adds : —
" Baiamai sees all ; he knows all ; if not directly, yet through Turramulan, a
subordinate deity. Tarramulan is mediator for all the operations of Baiamai
to man, and from man to Baiamai. Women must not see Turramulan on
pain of death. And when mention is made of Turramulan, or of the Bora
at which he presides, the women slink away, knowing that it is unlawful
for them so much as to hear anything about such matters."

{(I.) 'We have seen that, at some places, an image of Dharamulan is set
up at the Bora. In another place, the bull-roaring instrument, whose voice
begins the ceremony of the Bora and warns the women not to look, is called
tirrikoty, and is sometimes made in the shape of a fish. The magic wand
that Eidley mentions is called dliurumbulum, and the great ancestral Bora
ground of the Kamalarai tribe in New South Wales is at Tirri-hai-liai. The
source of all these names seems to me to be dara, dri, — a very old language
root, meaning ' to protect,' from which come words in various languages,
meaning ' a prince,' ' a lord.' I therefore take Dharamulan to mean some-
thing like " Lord of the mysteries;" for it is evident that he presides at the
Bora, and is the giver of the blessings therein communicated. The use of a
fish-shaped roarer to indicate his presence leads me to compare him with the
Chaldsean god Hoa, Hea — half man, half fish — who, in the Chaldseo-Baby-
lonian religion, was reverenced as the revealer of all religious and social
knowledge. His abode was the sea — the Persian Gulf — where he passed the
night, but by day he remained among men to instruct them. Thus he
became a legislator and protector. Hea, as a god, sees that " all is in
order," and, being acquainted -with all sciences, he can baffle the powers of
evil by his magic arts. Witli this I compare the ' magic' shown by the
' karaji' in the Bora in the presence of Dharamulan's image. The Akka-
dians, and from them the Babylonians, invoked the aid of Hea, when spells
and incantations were found unavailing against the demons. So in the Bora
passage, when Dharamulan has been duly honoured and magic influence
conjured up for the driving away of all adverse spirits, the lad is taken into
the upper circle and sees there the gods of his fathers, and learns to know
them and their attributes, just as in the greater Eleusinia of G-reeee the
duly qualified were, after a course of previous preparation, led into the
inner sanctuary in the darkness of night, and there, by a dim light, allowed
to see and know the holy things.

(E.) The next steps in the process of initiation are interesting: — (1) a
sacred wand is shown to the ' boombat ;' (2) he gets a new name ; and
(3) certain white stones are given to him.

(e.) (1.) The wand. — In this there is a notion of consecration and saered-
ness ; for, on the Egyptian monuments, the deities are constantly represented
as holding in one hand a long rod or wand, with a crook on the upper end of
it. The king also, and some of the higher officers of State, carry this
' crook.' In India, we find that Tama, the regent of the south, has a name
from a sacred staff or rod, and some religious impostors wear, as badges of
sanctity, a staff and a deer's skin. The Magi of Persia carried the
"■bare^ma' or 'harsom,^ a divining wand, as one of the badges of their minis-
try, and the magicians of Egypt similarly had rods in their hands wheii

20 THE ABORIGINES OP NEW SOUTH WALES.

they stood in the presence of Pharaoh. The traditions of Peru speak of a
sacred golden wand borne by the son and the daughter of the Sun. These
are analogies ; but the nearest approach to the use of the wand in the Bora
is, I think, to he found in the Pinnish Kalevala, where there is a reference
to a "celebrated wand " — evidently, as in Peru, a sun wand — which protects
its possessor from all spells and enchantments ; even the gods are glad to
use it against the powers of evil.

(2.) A new name. — Having now acquired a knowledge of sacred things,
the initiated is henceforth a new man ; he is now ' twice born,' and, like his
kinsman in Upper Guinea already mentioned, he will come out to the world
in a new character, renouDcing his former estate. In India, a youth becomes
one of the ' twice born ' by investiture with the sacred cord, receiving thus
a spiritual birth ; thereafter, like our ' boombat,' he passes into the hands of
religious preceptors, who teach him the sacred prayers, mystic words, and
devotional ceremonies. In more modern times, whenever a monastic house
or a nunnery receives, from the world without, one more recluse, a new name
is given by which he or she may thenceforward be known in religion. The
underlying idea in all these instances is, that a religious profession gives one
a new character and a new relation to the rest of the world. And who will
deny that this is true, whether the professor be black or white ?

(3.) The white stones.- — I am inclined to believe that the 'boombat'
receives only one or two of these at a time, aad that the number of them is
increased according to the number of Boras be attends, until he becomes a
full and accepted master of the craft, and thus needs no more. In any case
they are used as talismans, and are carried in his waist belt during the whole
of the man's life. A ' karaji,' in the presence of a friend of mine, swal-
lowed three or four small ones, saying, " That fellow stick there." He
believed that the crystals, remaining in his stomach, would give him more
power as a medicine man. The negroes of Guinea use small stones as
fetiches, and they carry them about their necks or under their armpits.
These stones are sold to them by the priest, after being formally consecrated.
The white colour is a sun colour. It is beneficent and preservative against
evil, as already shown ; hence the Hindoos dedicate white stones to Siva, the
eternally blessed one.

(P.) The initiated lad is next led to a camp at a distance ; he is kept
there for eight or ten days receiving instruction, especially in songs and
dances ; he also eats here, and his confidence in divine protection is tested
by hideous noises during the darkness of night.

(/) It is rather singular, as a coincidence, that Pestus speaks of certain
religious ceremonies in Eome as lasting ten days, and that the Dionysia and
the greater Eleusinia of Greece also lasted nine or ten days, and that part
of these Grecian ceremonies was a solemn meal and a solemn bathing or
purification by water ; thereafter instruction was given. So also, a young
Brahman must reside with his preceptor for some time, until he has acquired
a thorough knowledge of the sacred books ; he must pass through certain
purificatory rites, wliich remove the taint of former sin ; one of these is the
cutting off of the hair, and with this corresponds the cutting off of the hair
in the Bora, or the knocking out of the front teeth, as practised by some of
our tribes. The singing and the dancing are everywhere essential parts of
pagan worship, and the dance is, in its origin, religious.

(G.) Then come the washing and purification which I have just spoken
of; but, after that, they join hands all round, dance round the fire and jump
into it and through it.

MATURITY. 21

(y.) Analogies to this way of purification and protection by fire are
abundant. In Bretagne, at this hour, the French farmers protect their
horses from evil influences by the service of fire. They kindle fires at night-
fall ; then, at dawn of day, the horses are led thrice around the fires, and a
particular prayer, known only to a few, is said before the dying flame. As
the last words are pronounced, the men all leap on the embers with their
feet joined. The ancient British Celts, to which stock these same Bretons
belong, did much the same thing ; for on May Day the Druids used to light
large fires on the summits of the highest hills, into which they drove all four-
footed beasts, using certain ceremonies to expiate ttie sins of the people.
Until very lately, it was a common practice in diff'erent parts of Ireland to
kindle fires in the milking yai'ds on the first day of May, and then many
women and children leaped through them, and the cattle were driven through
in order to drive off evil influences. In ancient Eome, on the feast of Pales,
in April, the same forms of purification and dedication were observed. The
Hottentots of the present daj'- retain the old customs, for they make their
cattle pass through the fire as a preservative against the attacks of wild dogs.
In India, the youth, when about to be invested with the sacred thread, stands
with his face to the sun, and walks thrice round a fire ; and, in the marriage
ceremony, the bride is lead thrice round a sacred fire. An incantation, used
by the Chalda?an sorcerers of old, has these words, "May the Grod Pire, the
hero, dispel their enchantments or spells for the injury of others." An
Australian 'jin,' going to the river to fetch water after nightfall, carries for
protection a burning stick ; and the men in the camp at night, when they
think an evil spirit is near, throw firebrands at him to drive him away.
Should we wonder, then, that our Australian blackfellows, if, as I believe,
their ancestors first of all came from Chaldaean land, have not forgotten the
fire observances, and still trust in the protection of a fire god ?

So far the Bora and its analogies. I have thus considered at some length
these institutions, both because the Bora is the most important of all the
social regulations of our aboriginal tribes, and because its universal distribu-
tion among them, although with slight local difEerences in the manner of
its celebration, seems to me a strong proof that our black tribes are all
brethren of the same race, and that they are of the same origin as the
rest of mankind, their closest kindred being the blacks of Africa. Is it
possible that so many tribes, with so many different dialect.^, and confined
by their laws and habits each to its own hunting ground, should have
evolved from their own consciousness ceremonies so similar, and which, when
examined, correspond in so many points with the religiousness of the ancient
world ? How is it that the blacks of Australia and the blacks of G-uinea in
Africa have similar ceremonies of initiation ? Is it not because they have
come from the same ethnic source, and have a common ancestry and
common traditions ?

Miscellaneous.

Here I wish to introduce a few particulars which are connected, more or
less remotely, with the subject of this section. These are— (1), the ' kara-
bari' ; (2), astral worship; (3), the use of gesture language and masonic
signs ; (4), the numeration of the aborigines.

™, 'Karabari' is an aboriginal name for those dances which our natives

^ i^ . often have in the forests at night. Hitherto the name has been
Karabari. ^j.jj.^.gjj 'corrobboree,' but etymologically it should be 'karabari,'
for it comes from the same root as ' karaji,' a wizard or medicine man, and
'-bari' is a common formative in the native languages. The 'karabari'

22 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

has teen usually regarded as a form of amusement, a dance to wMle away
the time on the moonlight nights ; but the men alone engage in it, a few-
women sitting by and making a tap-tap accompaniment to the rhythmical
movements of the performers, and from the description of a simple form of
the ' karabari,' which I give ia the section on the social life of the natives,
it will appear that these dances partake of a semi-religious character. Eor
them the men dress themselves with great care in their own way, and often
dance ail night long, and in very dark nights, too, to the light of a blazing
fire. To a white onlooker they seem to be a band of demons, ghastly as the
skeleton dead, working themselves up into a fit state for some act of devilry.
But there cannot be much amusement in it, for the men take it quite seri-
ously, no fun goes on, and their movements are so vigorous that the actors
are covered with sweat, and at the close are completely exhausted by their
efforts. And they are not mere dances, these ' karabaries,' they are imitations
of the hunting of the kangaroo, and of the way in which the emu and other
food animals are killed. In short, I regard them as semi-religious dances,
by which our blacks, after the custom of their, ancestors, pray for success in
getting food. In this view I am strengthened by what I know of similar
dances in Equatorial Africa. Eor instance, Mr. "W". W. Eeade says : — " In
the Grorilla country, Etia, the chief hunter of the village, came and told me
one evening that he had heard the cry of a njina (gorilla) close to one of the
neighbouring plantations. He said that we should certainly be able to kill
him the next day, and that, during the night, he and his friends would cele-
brate the gorilla dance. . . To the music of three old men, who had
their faces grotesquely chalked, danced Etia, imitating the uncouth move-
ments of the gorilla. Then the iron bell was rung, and O'Mbuiri, the evil
spirit, was summoned to attend, and a hoarse rattle mingled with the other
sounds. . . . Here could be no imposture. It was not an entertainment
arranged for my benefit, but a religious festival, held on the eve of an enter-
prise. . . . The dancing was not discontinued until cock-crow."

It is true that a ' karabari ' dance sometimes appears to us no more than
an amusing pantomime ; for our blacks are very clever mimics — many of
them, most amusing fellows, when one comes to be familiar with them ; as,
for example, when they got up a ' karabari ' on the estate of my friend
Mr. M'L, and invited him to see it, knowing, as they did, that he was always
good-natured and kind to them. There he saw himself personated by a
blackfellow, who was made up as an excellent duplicate, even to the helmet-
hat on his head. There they danced in their usual way, and made a song to
tell how the white man had come from afar and taken the land from them,
but that some white men were good to them, and so on. Sometimes, how-
ever, the ' karabari ' pantomimes are not so complimentary as this ; for a
party of blacks dress themselves up as colonists, and imitate a conflict with
the natives, in which, of course, the colonists are signally routed and
damaged, much to the delight of the rest of the tribe who are looking on.

Astral ^^ *° astral worship, our native tribes are attentive observers
Worship °^ ^^^ ^^^" ' ^^ ^^'^^ ^^^ °^ ^^® around the camp fire, after night-
-' ■ fall, their gaze naturally turns to the starry vault above, and
there they see the likeness of many things with which they are conversant
in their daily life — young men dancing a 'karabari' (Orion), and a group
of damsels looking at them (the Pleiades), and making music to their dance —
the opossum, the emu, the crow, and so on. But the old men will tell you
that the regions " above the sky" are the home of the spirits of the dead, and
that there are shady fig-trees there, and many other pleasant things. Many

MATITEITT. 23

men of thfiir race are there, and that one of the foremost of them all is a
great man, Menee : he is not visible, but they all agree that he is in the sky.
A greater than he is the great Gharabooung, who, while on earth, was always
attended by a small man ; but now the two shine as comrades in the sky — ■
the "Heavenly Twins." Both G-harabooung and Menee are "skeletons,"
they say. In his mortal state, Gharabooung was a man of great rank and
power ; he was so tall that his feet could touch the bottom of the deepest
rivers ; his only food was snakes and eels. One day, not being hungry, he
buried a snake and an eel; when he came back to eat thom, he saw fire
issuing from the ground where they were ; he was ■named by his companion,
the little man, not to approach, but he declared he did not fear the fire, and
boldly came near ; then a whirlwind seized him and carried him " above the
sky," where he and his companion still are, and " can be seen any starry night."
There is no worship in that, only respect and reverence towards ancestors ;
but the next story, which I give in the words of a friend, contains an example
of the religious exorcism of an astral phenomenon portending evil : — " In
1845 or 1846, a comet appeared, and the blacks at Dungog acted a special
' karabari' on account of it. The only explanation I could get from them
was that the ' karabari' was held because of the appearance of the comet.
There was a performance three times a day, and each performance had two
acts in it. In the background, at the spot where the performances took
place, three sheets of bark were set up, the one in the centre being larger
than either of the other two, and all three having devices painted on them,
similar to those on the trees around the upper Bora circle. In front of these
sheets of baric were the performers arranged in a straight line, and painted
as is usual for a ' karabari ' ; at some considerable distance behind these was
a line of several fires, and behind the fires sat the ' jins' who were to give the
music, and behind them the spectators. In each act the men danced' karabari'
for a while, and, at a time when the attention of the spectators was fastened
on the acting, two blacks, curiously painted, rushed out suddenly from some
hiding-place, and placed themselves, motionless, in a crouching attitude, with
staring eyes and pointed finger, right in front of the fires. These were called
the two ' ghiitas.' This performance lasted about a week, probably as long
as native food could be procured for all, and then the blacks moved on and
taught their next neighbours the songs and the performance. The whole
affair must have come from a distance ; for the words of the songs were
strange to our men, resembling those of the Kamalarai dialect, and it was

the Paterson blacks who came and taught it to the Dungog blacks."

*
The two ' ghutas', as I think, were ' karajies', exorcising the evil portended
by the coming of the comet.

Here, also, I introduce another friend, who has a curious tale to tell about
doings at the Bora : —

" When travelling between Surat and Goondiwindi, about the year 1858,
we came to a spot on the Mooni Creek, in the midst of scrub country,
where the blacks had erected a large mound of a curious shape on an open
space within the scrub. On proceeding to examine it, we found it covered
with sheets of bark ; these we removed to the number of forty or fifty, and
then we saw that this figure resembled the body of a duck, but with the
neck, head, and protruding tongue of a large snake. The body was about
fifteen feet long, with a height of six or seven feet ; the neck and head were
ten feet long , and stood high above the ground. The body was made of
boughs of trees and bushes thickly pressed together ; the neck and head
were a long log of suitable shape, with the one end fixed in the ground

24 THE ABORiaiNES OP NEW SOUTH WALES.

among; tte boughs. The wliole had been plastered over with'mud, and
this, when dry, had been ornamented with red and white colours in
streaks and daubs. The head had also been shaped to represent the
head of an angry snake, and was coloured red. The mouth oi: the figure
was furnished with a fierce forked tongue. The ground around this curious
figure, to a diameter' of about fifty feet, was trodden bare as by the feet of
many men.

" We were afterwards informed by the blacks near by that they had made
this figure, and that they had danced a ' karabari ' around it ; that it was
tha ' dibbil-dibbil ' — a demon which frequents deep water-holes, and carries
ofi' and devours those who incautiously enter. They called the figure
' wunda.' The tribes all around had assembled for this ' karabari,' and we

could see numerous camps near. Mr. C saw a similar figure on his

place about fifty miles farther down the Mooni. The blacks had been
holding a Bora there."

f~, , In several instances, blacks in their wild state, and in places

-J- far removed from contact with civilisation, have been known

^ 3 ' io make use of masonic signs when approached by white men.
Anextractfrom a private letter written by a staff surveyor in Queensland and
not hitherto published, is a proof of this : — " In 1882-83, on the Flinders and
other rivers flowing into the G-ulfof Carpentaria, the blacks were very hostile,
and that made me go forth with a W'ell-armed party, consisting of ' kanakas,'
principally Tanna boys — a fierce and warlike tribe — and we had frequent
and severe encounters with the natives. One Sunday, when we were resting
in our camp on Settlement Creek, my horses, which were feeding about
twenty chains away, began to gallop about furiously — a proof to me that
the blacks were among them. Taking with me six of my boys, I quickly
entered the bed of the creek, and we ran down it till we were opposite the
place where the horses were. Then we suddenly emerged, and found our-
selves among a band of about twenty natives, who were amusing themselves
by spearing my horses. The fight which ensued was short, sharp, and
decisive; at the end of it only one black was left — a very tall and powerful
specimen, evidentlv a chief. He was completely hemmed in by myself and
my boys, and had hitherto escaped harmless by bounding and jumping
about. I had just covered him with my rifle, and in another instant he
would have dropped, when, to my utter astonishment, he gave me in rapid
succession three or four times, the penal signal of a inaster mason, and there-
upon stood to order. I instantly answered him, and, going nearer, I gave
the signs of entered apprentice, fellow craftsman, and master mason, which
he appeared to understand. My next five or ten minutes were f ullv occupied
in saving him from the wrath of my boys. But when I had succeeded in
making them understand that he was not to be harmed, I turned round to
our captive, and found he was gone ! He had dived head foremost into the
very long grass, and wriggled through it like a snake ; he got clean off, for
not one of us could find him ; I was much disappointed at this, for I wanted
to question him, and through him I might have succeeded in forming friendly
relations with the tribes round about. Again, some weeks thereafter, as I
was returning along a creek where I had completed a survey, I turned aside
to look at a spot where we had a fight with a few natives three days before
when on our way down, I saw the body of one man laid out, and covered
with bark ; on the chalky ground round him numerous emblems were carved,
some of them undoubtedly masonic signs, while others were representations
of snakes, iguanas, alligators, and the like.

MATUEITT. 25

" Our Eight AVorsLipful D.G-.M., the Hon. Charles Augustus Gregory,
formerly Surveyor-General of Queensland, one of our earliest explorers, told
me that he also found traces of free-masonry amongst the blacks of the
north-west of Queensland, although not so unmistakable as those I have now
narrated."

Captain Sturt, one of our early explorers, had a somewhat similar
experience sixty years- ago, when he penetrated into the interior, far beyond
the limit of previous discovery. He tells how he met here an old man and
his sons, and then he goes on to say : — " After some time, and having
conferred with his sons, he turned round and surprised me by giving me one
of the masonic signs. I looked at him steadily. He repeated it, and so did
his two sons. I then returned it, which seemed to please them much ; the
old man patting me on the shoulder and stroking down my beard. They
then took their departure, making friendly signs until they were out of
sight."

In the region where this incident happened to Captain Sturt, the blacks
have an extensive system of gesture language, by which tribes who do not
know the neighbouring languages are able to communicate with each other
on a great variety of subjects. It is quite possible that this knowledge of
gesture language is a portion of the instruction given to the youths of the
tribes there at the Bora ceremonies ; and therefore I have brought it into this
section. In gesture language a considerable variety of ideas can be conveyed
by the movements of the hand, and by applying it in various ways to the
body ; just as in our love stories, a young swain is represented as applying
his right hand to the region of his heart to signify his love. It may be that
Captain Start's adventure was only an instance of this gesture language ; but
I can scarcely explain the experience of Mr. Bedford, in Queensland, in the
same way. I leave it unexplained.

yy- ,. In the month of September, 1SS8, there were some letters

jp ,. in the Times newspaper, London, on the subject of Aust-

ralian arithmetic. A distinguished authority there said " one
of the clearest indications of the low mental powers of savages is that afforded
by arithmetic." It seems to me that this statement is too general ; for, even
although the power of counting up to high numbers were wanting in a
savage, it doe^ not follow that his mental powers in general are low. Per-
ception, cognition, and memory are mental powers ; but, if Sir John Lub-
bock's memory were weak, and yet the cognitive and perceptive faculties
remained strong and vigorous, it would be unjust to say that he is a man
" of low mental powers." Colonists who have been long familiar with the
blacks of Australia, with one voice, cry out against the assertion that they
are of low mental power, and could give hundreds of instances to the con-
trary. A friend of mine who, in his boyhood fifty years ago, was much in
contact with the tribe in the midst of which his father had settled, has told
me that two black boys, his companions, were " out and out good chess
players, taking plenty of time to study the moves, and showing great patience
and calmness ; these boys never went to school, and yet they could count up
to a thousand." It is very clear that mental power was there, in these boys,
but unseen and dormant, like seed in the ground, until circumstances led to
its being developed.

Sir John Lubbock also says : — " In no Australian language is there any
word for five." This is not quite correct ; for I know at least two large
tribes (and there may be others that I do not know of), the one in Queens-
land, and the other in the south-east of New South Wales, which have single

26 THE ABOEIGINES OF ]S^EW SOUTH WALES.

words for " five," and in each ease the word is formed from the native word
meaning " hand." As to the general question — the counting of mimbers — ■
I believe that a careful analysis of the numerals used by the Aryan family
of languages will show that the base of them is ove, P.vo, three, and no more,
three, being in many religions a sacred and complete number ; and that the
other digits are expressed by words meaning one-three, hand, hand-and-one,
liand-and-two, two-four, one luanting, two hands. If it should be proved that
the Aryans, now the most civilised of races, originally said one-three iovfour
why should our blackfellows be considered of low mental power because they
say two-two ior four? Indeed, I am inclined to think than our Australians
count four in the more natural vs-ay ; for they see nothing eround them
arranged in threes ; the beasts and birds go in pairs ; they themselves have
two feet, two hands, two eyes, and so they count by twos. If the Aust-
ralian blacks separated from the parent stock of mankind at a time when
the common numeral system was limited to one, two, or one, two, three, then
their ease is merely one of arrested development, their environment being
unfavourable after their separation ; or, if they ever had a developed system
of composite numbers, these have fallen into disuse through the operation of
a law of nature ; for their wants are few and they live so much from hand
to mouth that they had no need for higher numbers. Their neighbours in
Polynesia, who have plenty of fish to count, and bunches of bananas, and
yams, and 'tare,' and cocoa-nuts, have developed many peculiar expressions to
indicate the number of these ; but our blackfellow, who is well pleased when
he is able to sing of the capture of " Wakula, boolara, bundarra," (one, two
kangaroos), and whose only property is two or three sj)ears, clubs, 'bumar-
angs,' does not require to use high numbers in his daily speech. Neverthe-
less, when it is necessary, he counts ten, twenty, thirty, forty, by opening and
closing his hands, and thea for higher numbers he contents himself with
saying " many, many."

Por these and other reasons, it is desirable that men of science in Britain
and elsewhere should be careful in building theories upon what is said about
our Australian aborigines ; much of the information they have about them
is unreliable, for it has not been gathered by competent observers or tested
on scientific principles.

IV.-WIARRIAGE.

T) , _ ,, , As is the experience of the rest of mankind, so our black-
fellows also know something of love, courtship, and marriage.
To us it may appear novel to talk of love in this connection, but an Australian
girl, though black, is a lovable object. The youog women are in general
comely to look on ; they have plump faces and persons ; their gait has all
the gracefulness of nature ; their eyes are bright and sparkling ; their voices
thin and melodious, and their laugh clear and happy; in their behaviour they
are engaging and modest. I do not wonder that the young men of the tribe
love such girls. And thus youthful attachments do spring up. But, as in
more civilised communities, these love-ties may be rudely broken ; for a girl
in infancy, or even in the expectation of her birth, is often betrothed to an
old man, a friend of the family, and at maturity, but not till then, she must
go to join her husband, whatever her lover may say ; or she belongs to
a division of the tribe with which a young man of his clan must not marry
on pain of death ; or another lover asserts a claim to her, and the two rivals
must fight it out, the girl being the prize of victory. It is true that to
escape from the betrothed man, the girl may elope with her young lover and
hide for a time until the storm is blown over ; iDut it is not easy to get free

MAERIAGE. 27

of tlie storm, for the girl's family are bound to go after the girl and bring
lier back to fulfil the engagement made for her ; if they find her, they beat
lier and drag her with them ; but it may be that she elopes again and again,
and, if at last they see that she is determined on it, they let her have her own
way. A wife too may run away from her husband either alone in order to
escape from misery, or in company with another man as likely to be a kinder
consort to her ; but that too is dangerous, for the enraged husband pursues
and may kill the paramour ; her he beats unmercifully with his club and
com|)els her to return; if he thinks that she means to run away again, he
thrusts a spear through her leg, and so keeps her still for a time at least.
" Oh, how cruel !" you say. Tes, it is cruel, if we are to judge these blacks
by our standard of humanity. But, in considering this question of Australian
marriage, we must always bear in mind that here the woman is the absolute
property of her husband, just as much as an}'' goods and chattels, and he
may do with her whatever he likes, even to the extent of putting her to
death, without any challenge from social or tribal law. And whenever we
express our virtuous indignation at the cruelty of Australian blacks, we
should at the same time bear in mind that, not so very long ago, our own
English law allowed a husband to chastise his wife and to tyrannise over her
in many ways ; and American law was once very tender in dealing mth the
rights of a master over his slave as his own private property.

But all the girls are not betrothed at birth or in infancy ; many of them
grow up to maturity, mingling with the young men in their daily life and at
merry-makings, such as the tribal dances called the ' karabaries,' although in
them the girls and women are not performers, except in so far as they make
the music, while the men go through the performance of the dance. It has
been said that in their life before marriage, these young people have no
restriction in their intercourse and follow their lusts unchecked. Now it is
difiicult for one who has not lived among the blacks to disprove an assertion
of this kind ; but those white men who are likely to have had the opportunity
of knowing the facts, declare, that, on the contrary, the young people are
kept strictly under the eye of their near relatives and must not go beyond
the camp, unless accompanied by a married person. And the charge is not
probable ; for, at 12 or 13 years of age, a girl gets a husband and then the
marriage laws are binding ; and, at an earlier age, there are the laws which
we may call those of the " forbidden degrees" ; these regard the intercourse
of certain male and female classes in the tribe as incest.

-J^^ . Let us suppose, then, that a young man has by courtship

'^^ '"-^ ■ gained the goodwill of a girl of the tribal class with which
he is by law permitted to intermarry, or has taken a fancy to such a girl
without any preliminaries ; how must he proceed in his suit ? Of course, he
knows that he cannot marry until he has passed through the Bora
ceremonies of initiation into the privileges and duties of a tribesman. But,
if he has been initiated, he knows also that the tribal law gives him a right
to claim in marriage any girl of the proper class, and he now asserts that
claim either in person or by an envoy. He goes to the spot where the girl's
family is encamped and says to her father, ' I will come and take away Bunna
by-and-by,' or he sends his uncle with a similar message. No purchase-
money is offered or paid, and yet the father cannot refuse unless the girl has
been previously betrothed, for the young man has marital rights in posse
over any unmarried girl of that clals. And so the father consents ; and, the
sanction of the chief* and tribal council being obtained, the marriage

* In some places the chief gives a knotted string as a sort of " marriage license."

28 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

ceremony is fixed for a certain day. If there is no father alive, the girl's eldest
brother or uncle gives consent. And the young man's suit prospers the more
readily, if he has a sister whom he can use as barter with the girl's guardian
to be a wife of his. Meanwhile, if there has been no courtship, the young
woman's wishes have not been asked, and she may dislike the man chosen,
or may prefer another. In that case, as soon as she hears of the arrange-
ment, she runs awav from her father's control, and tries to find concealment
and refuge in some far distant part of the tribe where she may have friends.
Taking with him several of his companions, but they must be of the same tribal
class as himself, he pursues ; if he finds the girl, he beats her into submission,
no one hindering ; and, if she refuses to move, they all unite in carrying
her by force back to their camp. As a reward for their assistance, they are
all allowed to share with the husband the jus jirinuB noctis. In the Andaman
Islands, a Mincopie takes with him four companions on a similar errand,
and with like results. Elsewhere, custom requires the bride to resist her
husband literally with tooth and nail, and sometimes he emerges from the
contest not only worsted, but having his face streaming with blood from the
scratches on it. But in Australia, even when the marriage is founded on
mutual consent, the girl's natural dread of subjugation makes her shrink
from placing herself entirely under the control of the man, and she shows
unwillingness or reluctance to go to him ; the parents then interfere
and compel her by blows to go, or the man himself comes and drags
her away. Among the African tribes round Kilimajijaro, the correct
thing for the bride to do is to run off ; the bridegroom pursues, and has
no difficulty in overtaking her ; he seizes her, puts her on his shoulder,
pick-a-back, and carries her in triumph to his home, she all the time
screaming and the neighbours standing by and laughing heartily at her
discomfiture ; for, as they too were similarly laughed at, so it is now their
turn to laugh. This universal feeling with reference to marriage has given
rise to the theory of " marriage by capture," by which it is alleged that
marriage, in its first origin, was simply the act of a strong man taking
possession of a woman by force, and of as many women as he was inclined to ;
but I hold that the theory is fallacious, and that the facts on which it is
founded admit of quite another explanation.

But our Australians have a sort of marriage by capture, somewhat after
the fashion of the rape of the Sabine women in the early history of Home.
When a tribesman, from one cause or another, has a difficulty in getting a
wife in his own tribule, he takes with him a few of his comrades, and, making
an incursion into the neighbouring territory, he carries off a woman of that
tribe to be his wife. He does not seize anyone that comes first to his hand ;
for here too the tribal restrictions as to the intermarriage of certain classes
prevent ; and, however much the names of these intermarrying classes may
vary throughout the island, a black man always knows which class of females
he may marry with ; but the capture here may be similar to that by which
liobert of Normandy, and other bold men in the middle ages, got their wives ;
the persons may have known something of each other beforehand, and the
forceful suitor could not brook the delay of gentler ways.

Another kind of marriage by capture the Australians have, but it is common
enough among all savage people. A war band invades the territory of an
adjoining hostile tribe, kills the men, and carries off the women. Each woman
becomes the property of her individual captor.

In some districts, when a young man wants a wife, he goes to a camp
where there are females and throws in a ' bumarang ' : if it is not thrown

MAEEIAGE. 29

back, lie enters and takes the girl ofHs choice ; but if it is thrown back he
knows he must fight for her, for there is a rival in the way. So among the
Kaffirs, the bride on her marriage day has her body covered with red ochre,
and at one part of the cermonial has to throw an ' assagai ' into the cattle
kraal where the men are assembled. •

rpi p But when the match has been arranged with the full consent of

•>' all the persons concerned, and the day fixed for the ceremonial,
then there is such a gathering of friends and well-wishers as graces a similar
occasion in more civilized quarters. As many as 200 guest may arrive, the friends
of both families ; there is a great store of food prepared for the feast which
ensues ; a great fire is kindled and the guests arrange themselves on opposite
sides of it ; meanwhile the bride's mother has built a ' gunya' or native hut,
which is merely a rude shelter made of sticks and leafy boughs ; and the
bride has made a fire there ; the man is arrayed in gorgeous attire — that is,
streaks of red and white paint over his body ; the bride is brought in ; she is
seen to be similarly attired ; or, in some localities, she is merely adorned
with white feathers stuck in her hair ; the girl is led to the ' gunya ' by her
mother, or she is simply told to go to her husband, and she goes ; or, if not,
she is compelled to go. The young couple sit there all night, and do not
speak to each other ; at break of day she goes off to her father's home, but
at night she returns to her own, and then the whole proceedings are brought
to an end. This is the usual routine of a set marriage ceremonial, but the
details of it vary among different tribes.

-AT .1 . • From the day of the marriage, the bride's mother, who has been
, * "* ' so useful that day, not only becomes a mother-in-law to the
^"'' young man, but ever after, up to the hour of his death, holds a

mqst peculiar relation to him ; she must not speak to him nor he to her ;
they must even avoid looking at each other. One day, a friend of mine
was out riding about in the bush with a black man to assist him with the cattle ;
they saw a black woman not far off, and my friend said to the man, " Jack,
there's Mary; call her.; I want to speak to her." Jack took no notice of
this ; whereupon the gentleman, thinking that he had not been heard,
repeated the command. There was no answer. At last, when appealed to
again, the black man replied, " What for you ask that : you know I can't
speak to that fellow ; she my wife's mother." And so all communication
between the two must be carried on through a third person! If the man and
the mother-in-law chance to cross each others' path in the forest, or be in
danger of meeting there, the woman hurriedly hides behind a bush or a tree
till he is passed, and he holds his shield before his face so that he may not see
her. And this curious arrangement — which in some places is called the
' knalloin ' custom^affects also the mother of a little girl who has been
betrothed to an older man. From the hour of betrothal, they become mother-
in-law and son-in-law, and must avoid each other. They must, if possible,
never see each other. It is hard to account for so remarkable a custom ; but
our indigenes certainly think that, if there were any communication between
the two, some great evil would happen to one or both of them. The evil
spirits would come and inflict punishment on them by making them die or
become prematurely old.

Nor are the Australians alone in this curious superstition. A Kaffir
woman dislikes to use the name of her father-in-law or of any word which
contains his name. She avoids this by using another word of the same
meaning. Among the negroid Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, a man
and the wife of a younger brother avoid each other, and all converse between

30 THE ABORIGINES OE NEW SOUTH WALES.

tliem is carried on through another person. He must not touch her or his
wife's sister ; but he shows all respect towards the wife of his elder brother,
especially when she is older than himself ; thus this shyness affects only a
a married relative, who is younger than himself, even although marriage is
not possible between them. Women similarly are restricted in their inter-
course with a husband's elder brother or male cousin, or his brother-in-law.
And, in Northern Melanesia, similar reserve exists ; for all women are either
the sisters of the men, and between them consequently marriage is impossible;
or they are the wives in posse of the men ; and, conversely, the women hold
corresponding relations to the men, and, therefore, men and women, who are
already related by marriage, show much shyness towards each other. They
avoid using a word which forms any part of the name of a relation by marriage,
and a man and his mother-in-law specially shun each other, as in Australia.

■p And this state of things in the Santa Cruz group seems to me to

gamy, ^j^j.^^ considerable light on the system of marriage restriction in
the Australian tribes. It is well known that their law prevents a man from
marrying a woman of his own tribal class, and compels him to take his partner
from a certain other class. This exogamous system in our native tribes
has given rise to much discussion, and various reasons, more or less pro-
bable, have been assigned for it. Briefly, the facts are these. Throughout
Austraha, a tribe is, for the purposes of marriage, divided into two, or four,
and sometimes six, classes, and within each of these no marriage is possible.
Every man in that class must take a wife from another class, and the class into
which he has to marry is fixed for him. Intermarriage with a woman of his
own class is incest and a heinous offence. Now, it is clear that the two-
class arrangement must have been the original one, for four and six classes
can have come from two by subdivision ; but, if four was the original number,
it is difficult to see how the strong conservatism of savage tribes towards any
custom, which they regard as somewhat of a religious nature, would permit
them to curtail an arrangement handed down to them from their ancestors.
I shall there assume at present, and for this argument, that every where there
are only two exogamous intermarrying classes in each of our tribes, and
within each of these no marriage is permitted. It is also known that
everywhere among Ethiopians, that is, black tribes, marriage with a sister
is abhorred, and a sister's daughters are regarded as younger sisters, while
a sister's son inherits a man's property to the exclusion of the man's own
son. Descent is reckoned through the mother, and the mother's brother
has a special relationship to all her children closer than that of the
father's brother. A man may marry a brother's daughter, but not a sister's.
Paternal cousins of the same name may marry, but not maternal cousins.
Now, let us suppose that the first founders of any particular black race —
that is, the leaders of the first band that went forth to people new lands,
were two brothers, the band consisting of themselves and their wives and.
children, or two brothers going forth alone to settle on an island already
inhabited. Such a case is quite possible, for tradition in various parts of
Oceania says that such a thing has happened. The children of each of these
brothers, whom we shall call A and B, cannot marry among themselves,
for they are all brothers and sisters, but any son of A can marry any
daughter of B, and any son of B can marry any daughter of A, for these-
are brothers' children. Thus two exogamous intermarrying classes are-
established w^hich would embrace the whole community in perpetuity ; for
these class distinctions are heritable property. And even where the two
families of founders came as immigrants and settled among a small population
already established in an island or district, any wife whom a man might take

MAEEIAQE. 31

from among these indigenes would be a sister-in-law to the other men, of
the same division, and her daughters would be their younger sisters, descent
flowing through the mother. Exactly the same issues would arise whenever
the two immigrant founders of families and races were sisters ; and of such
a case, too, Polynesia has traditions. And now I see how the mother-in-law's
shyness and prohibition of communion come in. If the tribal view of
physiology alleges that the daughter is specially a product of her mother,
and continues to have a special physical relation to her mother (for the evi-
dence points in that direction) , then the girl's husband must shun all appear-
ance of direct communication with the mother-in-law, for she is of the same
tribal class as her daughter, and that is a class over all members of which he
has the possibility of marital rights ; but his relation to the daughter would
render the slightest touch of the mother-in-law equivalent to incest — worse
even than intercourse with a sister. I offer this as a theory to account for
this curious custom among our Australians. As a theory, it seems to explain
also why the father-in-law is not avoided in the same way. A father-in-law
on a visit to his daughter may enter the ' gjtinya ' and consort freely with
the husband, but the mother-in-law must stay outside. She must not speak
to the man even when he is dying ; only when he is dead, can she look on
his face, and join in the bleeding gashes and the wailing cry of grief for the
friend who is gone. It is needless to say that the natives themselves cannot
tell why all this is so. To all inquiries they only reply, ' Our fathers did so,
and so do we.'

However, in course of time the two primitive classes were expanded into
four, and each of these four classes came to be subdivided into ' totem '
varieties. This happened, as I think, not from the pressure of necessity and
the fear of inbreeding, as some say, but in a much more natural way. The
experience of all nations that have had any vitality in them shows a sort
of gemmation, a putting forth of fresh shoots which go out and establish
themselves as new tribes and independent existences. Increase of population
leads to this, or civil dissension, or a tendency to wander and colonise. The
leader of such a sept bears the by-name of 'the lion,' or 'the bear,' or 'the
kangaroo.' On his death that animal is regarded as his visible representative,
and is reverenced accordingly. No man of that clan will harm it ; for, on his
death-bed, he may have told his people that henceforth his spirit would live
in that animal, and so it is the lirst of their ancestors. That animal becomes
to them a ' totem,' after which they are named, and to which they look for
protection against evil ; if it is a thing, it becomes to them a ' fetich ' in
which the spirit dwells, and may do them good or ill, according to their
behaviour towards it. In Scotland, although there is no ' totemism ' there,
yet the principles which produced it in savage nations still exist ; for a loyal
Bruce will not willingly kill a spider; the Highland clansmen cherish the
plants which are the badges of their clans ; and the Scot abroad loves to see
the thistle, just as much as the shamrock delights the Irishman. Thus I
account for the spread of ' totemism.' Here, again, Polynesian -myths show
us this very process going on. Pili, originally a Samoan hero, was the
name of the leader of the swarm that peopled Hawaii ; now Pili means a
'lizard,' and the Hawaiian's reverence, or rather dread, the lizard.

Whenever a tribe, with only two exogamous classes, thus sent off a hive
from itself to form another tribe, it is natural to expect that the names of
these two would be retained and applied to a portion of the hive, while two
or more fresh names would be introduced for the other classes. Or, on
discarding the old names, the new band would arrange itself in divisions,

32 THE ABOEIG-INES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

named from tbeir several leaders. In this way tlie Israelite tribes, wlien they
occupied the land of Canaan, called themselves by the names of the sons of
Jacob. In Australia, the names by vphich the various tribes call their class
divisions are very diverse, and the ' totem ' animals of their sub-divisions are
very diverse ; and yet a black man, wherever he is on this vast continent,
knows whether a female whom he meets is of the class with which he can
intermarry. Oa one occasion, an aboriginal man came to my house from
Eockhampton, which is 800 miles distant. He was a very intelligent black,
and, in conversationwith him, I learned that, when he had reached a town
about 30 miles from ours, he found there a young black woman whose father
belonged to our local tribe, and knowing her to be of the proper class,
Jimmy married her. How he knew, I cannot tell. It may be that he
found her ' totem' name to mean the same animal which was the ' totem '
of the class with which he could intermarry in Queensland.

,-- . An aboriginal community, then, is commonly divided into four

„, ■' marriage classes, which, in the Kamalarai tribe of New South
Wales — one of the most widely known — are called : —

1 2 3 4 _

Male ... ... Ippai Kumbo Murri Kubbi

Female ... Ippatha Butha Matha Kubbitha

The first and the second of these classes have each the same subdivisions,
named after native animals, which they take as their ' totems,' viz., emu,
bandicoot, black snake ; while the third and the fourth take kangaroo,
opossum, iguana. The Kurringgai tribe, which occupies our sea-coast for a
long distance north and south from Newcastle, has the same class divisions,
except that Murri is by them called Bia, and their sub-divisions are black
snake, bandicoot, eagle-hawk, and stingaree. Other tribes elsewhere have
still the four classes, but under different names and with different sub-
classes. The law of intermarriage is such that there is no marrying
between members of the same ' totem,' but an Ippai must marry a Kub-
bitha, a Murri a Butha ; a Kumbo must marry a Matha, and a Kubbi an
Ippatha. The children of these marriages also arrange themselves in these
classes and sub-classes by fixed laws. The rule of descent, as given by
authors who have written ou this subject, is this : — Descent is reckoned
through the mother. To this rule, however, there are exceptions where the
children follow the father'' s classification. I am therefore disposed to offer
this on a more generally applicable rule : — Ohildren take the class and ' totem''
of their grandparents, and tiiis rule, so far as I can see, admits of no exceptions.
It corresponds also with a natural impulse among ourselves in the naming of
our children. I tabulate my view thus : —

Laws op descent amoko the Austealian Indigenes.

Eule : — "Ohildren fake the classification of their grandparents.'"

Por Males.

Murri (kangaroo') is the son of Ippai (emu) -. therefore his sons are

Ippai (emu).
Kubbi (opossum) is the son of Kumbo {bandicoot) : therefore his sons

are Kumbo (bandicoot).
Ippai (black-snake) is the son of Murri (iguana) -. therefore his sons are

Murri (iguana).
Kumbo (bandicoot) is the son of Kubbi (opossum) : therefore his sons

are Kubbi (opossum).

MAREIAGE.

33

Por Females.

Martha {kangaroo) is the daughter of Kubbitha (kangaroo) : therefore
her daughters are Kubbitha (Jcangaroo).

Kubbitha (opossum) is the daughter of Matha (opossum) -. therefore her
daughters are Matha (opossum).

Ippatha (emu) is the daughter of Butha (emu) : therefore her daughters
are Butha (emu).

Butha (hlack-snake) is the daughter of Ippatha (blacJa-snake) : there-
fore her daughters are Ippatha (black-snake).

The lineal descent thus becomes : —

For Males.

For Females.

Ippai

Kumbo

Kubbitha

Butha

Murri

Kubbi

Matha

Ippatha

Ippai

Kumbo

Kubbitha

Butha

Murri
and so on.

Kubbi

and so on.

Matha

and so on.

Ippatha
and so on.

As to the form of these names, it is obvious that those for females all end
in -tha, and are taken from the corresponding names for males. The names
Butha and Matha seem to be irregular; but Butha may be for Gutha from
Kumbo, for in Kumbo the to is phonetic and intrusive, and the root is Ku,
or rather Gu ; as to Matha, it is regularly formed from the same root as
■Murri, for Murri ought to be v^ritten Ma-ari, the -ari being a common suffix
formative in the language, and Ma is the root, from which also comes Ma-in,
a dialect form of the same meaning as Murri. Mari and Main both mean
a 'native' or ' blackman' ; its substitute, Bia, means 'father.' Ippai, in the
"Wiradhari dialect, adjacent to the Kamalarai, means an 'eagle-hawk.' I
cannot give any account of the names Kumbo and Kubbi, but they seem
both to come from the same root Ku or Gu. I presume that Murri and
Ippai were the two primary classes in the Kamalari system.

■,T- „ It may seem strange that there should be so many different

^j ^ -^ names for the four tribal classes ; but that is everywhere a
asse^. peculiarity of the Australian dialects ; each dialect generally
has its own name for the most familiar objects. Thus the tribal languages
have many words to mean a 'kangaroo,' and still more to mean the different
varieties of the kangaroo. And so, if the class-names designate the same
animals from tribe to tribe, these names must vary as other common words
do. But if, as seems likely, the Australians came hither in different bands
and at different times, each band under its own leaders, whose names after-
wards became 'totems' to their followers, then I can understand how the
class-names in the tribes are now so various, and why these names do not
everywhere signify the same animals. This origin of the class-names receives
countenance from facts known to esist among other savage tribes. The
Battaks of Sumatra, for instance, have among them clans, whose ' totem' is
the turtle-dove, the crocodile, &c., and the clansmen allege that they got
these names from their first ancestors. Then again it is well-known that, in

34 THE ABORIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

fhe Australian classification, some animal-names — the eao;le and tlie crow —
are more common than others, and these two especially fi-gure much in the
native mythology. Is it unreasonable to suppose that these were the by-
names of two great chiefs of the first immigrants ; just as Caleb, ' dog,' was
one of the leaders of Israelites in their invasion of Canaan. Now, on the
Murray Eiver, two class-names are Makquarra, ' eagle,' and Kilparra, ' crow.'
In our latitudes the synonyms for these are MuUian, and Wagan, and if the
same classification existed here these might be the class-names in use instead
of Makquarra, and Kilparra.

, . , The natives take another curious view of their tribal classifica-
nima ^j^^ , they believe that all natural objects are similarly divided
■asses. ^^^^ classes, male and female ; hence they address their dogs as
' ippai,' ' ippatha,' and so on ; so also they speak of the sun, moon, and
stars ; and the ' totem ' names also in some places are taken from the stars
and trees, and even rain. A blackfellow always treats with special respect
and kindness the animal or thing whose ' totem' name he bears. If he is
a Kilparra man, he thinks that the ' crow' watche« over him and will give
him due warning in time of danger, or will even communicate with him in
his sleep. If a colonist kills his ' totem' animal, the black will say, ' "W'hat
for you shoot that fellow ? that my father ' ; or '■ that brother belonging to
me; why did you do it?' And in common conversation among themselves
they often address each other, not by their individual names, but by their
class-names.

,, . There now remain only a few minor points to be considered

jfi- -, ^-f in connection with this subject of tribal marriage. It has
^' been said that morality is unknown in our tribes, and that
individuals consort together, male and female, like the beasts of the field.
This is utterly untrue so far as the Australians are concerned, and although
their code of morals is not founded on the Christian system as ours is, and
they therefore occupy a much lower platform, yet the light of nature is
still with them, in many respects, undimmed, as will be shown in another
section, and they have social and tribal punishments for those who trans-
gress. A woman who violates her fidelity to her husband may be beaten by
him, or speared through the leg ; that punishment may bo considered brutal,
but it is the only substitute they have for jail and hard labour. If she con-
tinues wanton, the elders of the tribe compel her to submit to »• sort of
homoeopathic remedy so effectual that, if it could be enforced in a civilised
community, I am sure that adultery would soon disappear. Or, if the husband
chooses, he may complain to the elders. of the tribe, and they, on cause shown,
decree a divorce ; but not if she has children. A wife may similarly com-
plain to them of the conduct of her husband, and they may order both the
man and his paramour to be punished. A woman also, who is cruelly used
by her husband, may flee from him, and place herself under the protection
of another man, with the hope of becoming his wife ; but the two men must
then determine possession by single combat in presence of the chiefs.

In other directions, the blackman's belief that his wife is only to be dealt
with as a portion of his private property comes into play. When visitors
come to the camp they are accommodated with wives while they remain ;
and a brave chief, who has done much for their tribe by his prowess, gets the
wives of other men sent to him by them as a mark of respect and friendship.
Two men may even agree to exchange wives for a time ; and, however jealous
a husband may be of his wife's fidelity in "the tribe, he is quite ready to
bargaiu with a white man, and with her consent too ; for a black woman

MxiEEIAGE. 35

considers it an honor to be thus courted by a man of a superior race. Here,
and in Equatorial Africa likewise, if a lover only agrees to giTe something,
no objection is raised by the husband ; and yet, notwithstanding all this, our
natives may be said to be on the whole a moral people — perhaps as moral,
generally speaking, as some of the European nations ; and their morality in
marriage is stamped on their languages ; for these have words which describe
the wantonness of a woman, and such words could not exist if morality were
unknown.

There are widows in the Australian tribes. When a man dies, his widow
is the property of his next brother, even if he has a wife already ; for there
is polygamy in the tribes, but it exists chiefly in the households of the chiefs,
and is not otherwise common. If from any cause this refuge fails the
widow, she goes to the dead man's paternal cousin, avoiding the sister
relationship as usual, or she goes back to her father's home, and remains
there until her brothers give her away in barter ; or, if she has no other
resource, she becomes the property of the community. This levirate custom
is not confined to Australia. In ivielanesia the woman is told at the time of
her marriage to which of his brothers she will have to go in the event of her .
husband's death. Among some of the aboriginal tribes of the north-west
provinces of Hindustan, the levirate custom also exists. The Bechuanas of
Africa have the same custom, and all the wives of the deceased elder brother
are taken over by his next brother. Even the wives of a deceased king there
belong to his son, and he may retain them or give them away as presents to
the under-ehiefs.

T 7 , ., The principle of inheritance by birth has not much scope in
Australia, for our blackf ellows have very little property to leave
to heirs. Their all is a few spears and a club and a shield,
a 'bumarang,' a cloak; some of these are put in the grave with the dead
man. Of course, the wife's utensils will belong to her successor. Keverthe-
less, there are indications to show that a man, when dying, may, by a verbal
will, leave such property as he has to a son or to any one he chooses. It
appears, however, that in all things there m a closer sympathy between a
man and his sister, for the maternal uncle has most to do with his sister's
family. In some places it is he that negotiates a marriage and gives away
the bride, and it is he that acts as guardian to his young nephews. This
seems to correspond with, although it does not go so far as, the Dravidian
custom, where, as in Travancore and among the Canarese, the law of in-
heritance passes over a man's sons, and conveys his property to his sister's
sons. The same is the law in Northern Melanesia. This also means that a
sister, from some physiological or other-cause, is regarded as nearer to a man
than his brother ; hence the rale elsewhere, that a man may marry his brother's
daughter, but not his si.ster's ; hence aLso the fact that in a part of the
Melan'esian region a mother's brother is called a father, while a father's
brother is only an uncle.

-j.,j- . 1 Only one thing more may be added in this section ; in spite of
.rp ,■" the hardness of their mode of life, married coujiles often live
•^ ' ■ happily and affectionately together to a considerable age, and
as they are a merry, laughter-loving race, their troubles and jirivations pass
lightly away. In their natural state, and wherever food is abundant, they
are prolific, and children are numerous in a native c^mp ; but in a hard time
abortion and infanticide are common; and, especially since the blacks in the
peopled districts have taken to European food and iuduigences and habit:^,
their name and their generation will soon have disappeared from the lands
of which their fathers were the sole possessors.

36 TJIE ABORIGINES 0¥ NEW SOUTH WALES.

V.-THE TRIBE.

•TJ7, , lu Australia there are only two things to be considered when we
■ ^?'f, proceed to locate a tribe — its territorial limits and its language.
** * ■ Eeligion cannot be taken as an element in this question, nor
tribal descent ; for the Bora, which is of a semi-religious nature, and the
native beliefs as to their deified ancestors, and the influence of evil spirits, are
much the same everywhere throughout the continent, and there are no
traditions as to a separate origin and descent of tribes, as in the stories of
Grreece and Rome ; but it is well-known here that each tribe had its own
'taurai' — territory or hunting-ground — usually determined by natural
boundaries, such as mountain ridges and rivers ; any transgression of these
limits was regarded by the adjacent tribe as a casus belli, and would at
once lead to hostilities. As a consequence of this isolation, and from the
operation of a principle, which caused the name even of a common thing to
be changed as soon as any man died who bore that name, the dialect of each
tribe has diverged very much from the original stock. Thus it is that each
tribe has come to be distinguished both by its dialect and by the limits
within which each member of the tribe might wander, without encountering
enemies who would drive him back. In many instances, the line of division
between languages, and consequently between tribes, lies on the test word
for ' no,' and this mode of distinguishing them seems to come from the
natives, for one of the largest tribes in New South Wales has always been
called the Kamalarai, the 'no-ers,' both by themselves and by others. And
many other tribes are named in the same way. In the case of the Kamal-
arai, however, another consideration comes into view. Immediately to the
north of them, there is a big stretch of country in which the word for ' no' is
wal; the people are therefore called the Walarai ; but their language is not
materially different from the Kamalarai, and they are arranged in four
esogamous classes bearing the Kamalarai names. For these reasons the
Walarai are regarded as only a sub-tribe of the Kamalarai ; and so also for
the Ngaiamba blacks on the west side, who speak the Wailwan dialect. I
have been considering this question of the tribes in New South Wales for
many years, and I cannot find that they are more than eight in number, the
Kamalarai, the Wiradhari, the Bakanji, the Kurring-gai, the Tung-gai, the
Paikalyung, the Waehigari, the Miirringgari. In addition to these, we have,
on our southern frontier, the Ngarego, who come in from Gippsland, which is
part of the colony of Victoria; and in the south-west corner, on both sides of the
Murray River, there is a bunch of associated tribes, each of them small, but
yet having its own name and differences of dialect. These seem to be the
fragments of tribes which have been hemmed in there by the irruption of
stronger tribes from the north. The Takkajari and the Kornu ■ tribes, on
our northern boundary, properly belong to Queensland. Of these names for
tribes, Kurringgai and Paikalyung mean the ' men.'

™, Now, these tribes have their sub-divisions, each with a ' taurai'

' rp -T J of its own ; and the sub-tribe is called by the name of some local
''* '* "■ feature of its ' taurai,' a river or a mountain, or the like, and
to this is added a suffix — ' kal ' on the coast, ' gialong' inland — to denote
place. And this principle of sub-division goes down even as far as the clan
and the family. Eor to each family is allotted a portion of the local 'taurai,'
from which it may obtain its supplies of food, and sometimes a dying chief
has been known to say that he wished to give some particular part of it to a
favourite son. This looks like a claim to private ownership in land, but, as
that is opposed to the communal system which prevails in all the tribes, I
would not admit the force of this evidence until it is established on better
ground.

THE TRIBE. , 37

■n 1 • Tliat the use of their 'taurai' is jealously guarded, even by tlie
sub-tribes, admits of no doubt. An incident, for which I can
vouch, proves this; for I have it on the testimony of a friend whose aid was
invoked on the occasion. About fifty years ago, in the Walarai country, one
division of the tribe had increased so mucb in numbers that their hunting-
ground was too strait for them, and a scarcity of food ensued. They therefore
sent their public messenger, or herald, to an adjacent sub-tribe, requesting them
to surrender a part of their ground. This was refused, on the plea that it was
against tribal law to do so, and that even if it were lawful, their ' taurai,' if
curtailed, would not be sufficient to furnish them with enough of food.
The others then sent back an insolent message to say that they would come
and take what they wanted, and would leave them nothing but grass to eat.
The latter replied that, if so, they would appeal for justice and aid to the
neighbouring sub-tribes. On this, both parties prepared for war, and the
weaker side asked my friend to come and help them with his musket. This
he declined to do. But the two sections assembled their forces and met ; as
usual, numerous parleys ensued, much talk, and angry oratory. At last it
was agreed that next day an equal number from each side should fight it out.
"When the time for action came, their courage, I suppose, began to fail them,
or their passions had cooled, for the dispute was settled by single combat.
This is the common course and issue of a tribal quarrel.

rp 77 Notwithstanding all this, a man going on a visit or on business

''^ '' ■ may pass freely from any one locality within the tribal
boundaries to any other, and wherever he comes he is received with
hospitality. It is only a war-party or a band of blood-avengers that will
cross the "boundary, and enter on the land of another tribe. Nor is this
fencing of territory confined to Australia. The negroid Mincopies of the
Andaman Islands have strict regulations of the same kind between their
tribes, and the Hottentots of South Africa had the same before the white
man came there ; as they possessed flocks and herds, intrusion on their pasture
lands was a serious offence. So long as a tribe depends on the chase or on
pasture for its subsistence, and is nomadic in its members, there is local
community in land ; but when any portion of the tribe takes to cultivation,
then individual tenure in land springs up. Now, our blackfellows have not
got beyond the hunter stage, and do not cultivate ; it is only in peculiar
circumstances, where there are permanent supplies of food, that they settle
in one place, and build grass huts for constant occupation.
„. . , . And yet our tribes, even when hostile, do not shut themselves
Visiting, a^itogether out from social intercourse with each other. At the
Iradmg. g^gg^^ Bora ceremonies, men of the adjacent tribes are invited to be
present, and universal brotherhood prevails ; and, at a certain season of the
year, a sort of fair, called Mindi, is held in any place which may be suitable,
and tribesmen from all quarters attend. There is then a general barter of
useful articles— in fact, a buying and selling, something like a Nijni-
Novgorod trafficking, to which each man brings the things that his own
district produces, and exchanges them for others which it has not, and which
he wishes to have.

In Melanesia, unimproved bush land seems to belong to nobody ; but, as
soon as a man by labour clears a piece of land, it is his own in perpetuity;
villagers who may happen to settle on it pay no rent ; they only make
presents as a sort of feudal homage to the head of the family which is
descended from the original proprietor. But, if the owner of the land lets
another man plant fruit-trees on it, these trees and their produce are the
heritable property of the planter and his representatives.

38 THE ABOEIGINES OE ISTEW SOUTH WALES.

■jij-- , • It is not supposed that the Australian tribes have in all time
tgra ions. gQ^^^JQ^jg^ ^^ occupy the very same ' taurai' which they now have.
There is ailux and reflux among savage tribes — a growth and decay. This is
very conspicuous in Africa. A tribe, whose location was near the Cameroon
Mountains, was, in a few years, found to have drifted down to the mouth of
the Congo ; and Livingstone's friends, the Malotolo, are now said to be
almost extinct. In our country, the Maroura tribe, which now lives at the
junction of the Murray with the Darling Eiver, was found, in 1831, far up
the Darling, and moving down. These chauges happen in various ways.
About 1830, a terrible epidemic of an eruptive disease like variola raged
among our tribes. At a spot which I know the deaths were so rapid and
numerous that the blacks could not bury their dead ; they had constantly to
shift their camp, and just leave a sick friend with a little water beside him
to live or to die, untended. After this, the tribe never recovered its
numerical strength. Now, if, in these circumstances, a neighbouring tribe
had escaped the epidemic and seized the opportunity to make an attack,
these Kurringgai would have disappeared from the map, and the others would
have occupied their place ; and such a movement as this, like the letting
out of water, might have caused the displacement of many other tribes
further to the north. Such displacements are very common in a region
which is overcrowded, as is Central Africa and on the Zambesi ; for, in a
crowd, when it once begins to move, a man cannot help shifting his position
as it moves. So it has been with the Makololo ; another tribe came in and
conquered them ; killed all the men ; spared the women and children ; and
thus the tribe is gone. Livingstone says that there were traces of many
extinct tribes in the lands he passed through. And so it must have been in
Australia in the past.

m n J There is notliing of the nature of kingly rule in any one of

„ the tribes, nor is there an over-chief for the whole of a tribe ;

, ' but the affairs of each section of a tribe are administered by

a number of elders, among whom one man is considered the

leader or chief, because of his superior wisdom and influence. To this man's

opinion much deference is given when the old men sit in council, although

he cannot control the others by his individual authority. He and his wife

and his family occupy a position of dignity and respect in the sub-tribe, for

I have heard the daughter of such a chief claim to be a ' princess ' ; and I

have seen such a chief walking along with stately parade, and two henchman

behind him at a proper distance, carrying on their shoulders the animals

which had been caught for food. He is addressed by his title as chief, and

not by his name, and younger men do not speak to him till they are spoken

to, and in all respects his position is one of honour. He and his assessors

regulate all matters that may be referred to them by the members of the

sub-tribe in their individual relations, as well as the general interests of their

community ; they settle private disputes, allot punishments, and see them

executed ; they conduct the great tribal ceremonies, such as those of the

Bora ; and decree either peace or war. At their councils they sit in a circle

at a distance from the camp, in the recesses of the bush, and often at night

time. " I once," says a friend of mine, " came suddenly upon a lot of the

old men sitting in a circle in anxious deliberation. As I passed on, one

of them whispered to me not to tell anybody that I had seen them."

„ The succession to the dignity of chief is neither hereditary nor

nj^-^lw]^- " is i*' elective. "When an old chief dies he is buried with

uej^ii-p. gpgg|,^j honour, and the chiefs of adjoining sub-tribes attend

his funeral. Eor some time thereafter the government is allowed to go on

THE TEIBE. 39

as before, and no steps are taken to supply his place ; at last the council
meets and agrees to recognise the eldest son of the deceased as chief in his
room, the succession by custom falling to him ; but if he is unwarlike, or
supine in disposition, or otherwise unfit to be a leader, he is passed over and
the nest son who may be fitted for the honour is chosen. If the late chief
has left no sons, the succession passes to his brother and his sons. If the
late chief's son is a minor, he cannot sit as chief till he has passed through
the Bora, and if, when he grows up, he is found unfit for his position he may
be deposed. If there are two rivals competiug for the chiefship, they settle
the matter by single combat. The government of the nine tribes of the
Mincopies is very similar to this ; each tribe has its ' taurai,' which is the
common property of all ; in each there are sub-chiefs or elders, and a head
chief, whose authority, however, is very limited ; for of himself he cannot
assign punishments or enforce obedience. A son of his succeeds, if he is
qualified ; but if not, there is always one of the other chiefs who is known
to be best fitted for the vacant position. There a man does not become a
chief by descent, but his public estimation elevates him to rank ; if he has
shown wisdom and skill, if he is -generous and hospitable, and has provided
■liberal feasts for his friends, he is chief by general consent. In New Britain
the influence of a ' dukduk' man, a sort of sacred man, is also obtained by his
generosity in providing feasts of pigs and other viands, and in the northern
half of the New Hebrides something similiar to the ' dukduk' prevails. Iji
the New Hebrides also — a Melanesian region — there are no chiefs of sacred
blood and no hereditary rank ; in short, there, as in Australia, one man is
considered as good as any other, unless he shows fitness for the position ho
holds. Among the Bechuanas, a chief has mttch more power than an
Australian chief ; he has the command of life and death ; his decision is
always accepted ; and he alone sits when he is speaking in the council.
Q , , This Australian council of old and experienced men — this
J T, ■ T aboriginal senate and witenagemot — has the power to decree
. punishment for tribal offences ; the chiefs sit as magistrates to

decide on all causes that are brought before them. The punish-
ments which they impose are various; for serious offences against public law,
such as the divulging of sacred things, they decree death by the spear, pro-
bably at the hand of the tribal executioner, for there is such a functionary ; ifa
m.an has spoken to his wife's mother, he is obliged to leave the camp and pitch
his ' gunya' at a distance, and to remain there for some time ; if a husband com-
plains that his wife is wanton, and the council finds her guilty, she is
condemned to submit to a very ignominious punishment ; but for smaller
offences, the man is ordered by the chiefs to stand forth, armed only with a
shield, and thus to defend himself against the spears and ' bumarangs' thrown
at him by several men, the number of these varying according to the nature of
the fault he has committed ; only one spear is thrown at him at a time, and he is
warned each time of throwing; his relatives stand by, in his interest ; it is said
also that the chiefs sometimes allow a volley of spears to be thrown all at
once. In some cases, if the offence is not of any magnitude, the offender's
wife is allowed to stand beside him, armed with a yam-stisk — the women's
weapon ; with this she strikes down the spears as they come in.

But many grievances are arranged without the intervention of the chiefs,
in the rough and ready way common among schoolboys. Por instance, a man
has been found stealing from his neighbour, or two men quarrel about a
women ; a fight ensues, and with any weapons which may happen to be at
hand ; the one or the other gets his head broken, and there the matter ends.
In a set duel for some offence, the one man with his club pounds away at

40 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

tlie other, who defends himself with his shield ; he continues showering
blows until he is tired ; then the adversary sets to work with Lis club, in
the same manner, until the one or the other succumbs. Sometimes also,
even in serious matters, the chiefs are not required to intervene. If a man
has by force taken and married a woman, in violation of any tribal law,
the women's relatives complain to the man's class ; they are bound to
compel the man to give back the woman ; if they do not, a party feud
arises, which can be appeased only by blood. The following description of
such a party battle was written sixty years ago, and is copied from a private
journal : — " 10th September, 1833. — I was to-day present for the first time at a
battle of natives, ten men being engaged on each side. A clear spot had
been selected as the place of combat. The two bands advanced to about
thirty paces from each other; then a parley commenced, in which words got
higher and higher, until, in exasperation, two or three ' bumarangs' were
thrown from the one side. Presently, the others returned the challenge in
the same way, and then the parties gallantly closed, and began to belabour
one another's heads unmercifully with their clubs. Three or four of the com-
batants were soon prostrate, and the blood on their backs showed that the
blows had been forcibly applied. Threats, dark and deep, were now heard ;
spears were got ready for action, and the dreadful howl of defiance was
raised. The combatants again opposed each other ; but with more deadly
weapons than before. But, while the sight of blood arouses the valorous
feelings of the men, it evidently excites the softer sensations of the other
sex ; for now, all at once, there rushed between the parties a hag bearing the
name of woman. Her eloquence was great, if we may judge by the noise
she made. She ' suited the action to the word and the word to the action,'
and, as often as a man lifted a spear to throw, she interposed herself. Her
violence was becoming outrageous, when there came forward from the oppor
site side a woman also armed with a tomahawk, and seemed inclined to take
summary means to quiet the first intruder. She, however, was not to be
daunted ; for, in reply, she brandished her stick as though game to the back-
bone. The angry mood, however, of these two females suddenly changed ; for
they ceased to threaten, and agreed to endeavour to preserve peace between
their friends ; but the first, finding her efforts in this direction to be unavail-
ing, abandoned herself to despair, and, seizing a tomahawk, cut her head with it
in a most dreadful manner. Whether she intended also to cut short her
existence or no, remains an unsettled question, for the tomahawk was
wrested from her hands. The female affray was to me by far the most
amusing part of the business, and no London fisherwomen could have
assailed one another with greater seeming virulence, or with more ready
language. The one party had hawks' feathers stuck in their- hair, a sure sign
that their intentions were deadly."

As I have said in another place, the war often ends in a single combat
between chosen champions, even after the battle has been set in array
between a picked band on the one side and the other; but when the women
interpose, and rouse the passions by their tongues, there comes on a general
melee. The women, too, take up the fight. They advance against each
other, and are roused to fury by mutual taunts of the most exasperating
kind. Then they close in, spit in each other's faces, tear hair, and strike
lustily with their yam-sticks. The men do not interefere.

The nature of the punishment imposed for an offence varies in different
localities. In Western Australia, a man guilty of abduction stands calmly
while the aggrieved parties drive their spears into his leg. Elsewhere, a man
accused of a serious offence gets a month's citation to appear before the

THE TEIBE. 41

tribunal, oa pain of deatli if he disobeys. If be is found guilty of a private
wrong, he is painted white, and made to stand out at fifty paces in front of
the accuser and his friends, all fully armed. They throw at him a shower
of spears and ' bumarangs', from which he protects himself with a light shield.
If he is not harmed by these, his brother or other male relative, who stands by
as a second, hands him a heavy shield, and each adversary then advances, and
gives him a blow with a club. As soon as blood is drawn, all are friends
again.

Women and children are beaten with a stick if they cause strife by lying
or otherwise ; and if it is a man who does it, he must stand out and take
his punishment in the usual way with 'bumarang' and club. Liars are much
disliked ; and if anyone shows himself to be really a bad man and incor-
rigible, he is put to death judicially.

In some tribes, when a blood-feud has to be atoned,' the whole 'totem'
class of the aggressor meets the whole class of the victim ; champions are
selected to represent each side, as usual, and the rest of the men are
spectators.

In Melanesia and Polynesia generally, the punishment imposed for offences
is a fine of so many pigs. But in Eiji, a man may be strangled or clubbed,
or his ear, nose, or finger may be cut off for an offence. Adultery is severely
punished. But in all cases the aggrieved person will usually accept a ' soro,'
or expiatory gift, as satisfaction.

-p ,;. The council of chiefs also appoints the 'herald' or tribal
,, messenger. He must be a man fluent of speech, well acquainted

^ ' with the neighbouring dialects, and a good traveller. He passes
in safety between and through hostile tribes, for his person is inviolable,
and he is known to be a herald by the red net which he wears round his
forehead. Charged with a message from his tribe, he approaches the camp
of the enemy, and makes his presence known by a peculiar cry. This brings
around him all who are within hearing. He sits down and remains silent
for along time ; for this is native etiquette ; nor do they speak a word to him,
till, at last, his tongue is loosed, and then his eloquence is like a rapid
torrent. He is listened to with the greatest attention ; the chiefs consult,
and he waits there for the night or perhaps for several days to receive their
reply.

This public messsenger is often sent on peaceful errands to the sub-
tribes all around ; for, although the business of each of these is regulated
independently by its own council of elders, yet there are occasions of
general interest in which they all combine for their mutual benefit. Of
these occasions, the most important is the Bora ceremonies, at which young
men are formally admitted into the tribe, and are taught all the tribal lore
and their personal obligations as members of the tribe. That is a joyful
season, and blacks assemble then from all quarters. Another such occasion
is the Mindi meetings, or general fairs, when the blacks from distant places
bring in their commodities for barter. Another is a general hattue for game ;
for, if any sub-tribe find itself hard pushed for food, it can summon its
neighbours to give their assistance in the hunt. Then they all spread them-
selves in a circle, whose diameter may be 10 to 15 miles — like the hunting
circles which, in Celtic Scotland, are called tiomchioU — and gradually con-
verge, driving the game before them ; when the circle has become small
enough, the men despatch the kangaroos and the wallabies with their clubs
as they endeavour to break the line. Or, there may be disputes or grievances
between the sub-tribes, which must be arranged by mutual conference. For

43 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

all suet purposes the public messenger is used. He gets Bis message from his
own chief, and ofE he goes in haste to deliver it to all concerned ; he also carries
a message-stick, that is, a short rod or baton with notches of various sorts
cut on it to assist his memory. If he is not known far from home, he may also
take with him his chief's ' bumarang ' as credentials. Different colours may
also be laid on the message-stick, according to the nature of the message
which he is to deliver. This one man may pass on and deliver his message
to all for whom it is intended ; but often he goes no farther than the nearest
' taurai.' The chief of that division receives the message and the stick, and
sends it on by the hand of his own messenger, and in this way it soon is
known to all. The message tells the purpose for which the meeting is
convened, and the place and day of assembly. A meeting may also be
summoned by smoke signals, of which more anon. All who are thus sum-
moned are bound to obey on pain of death ; a black boy in the service of
a colonist will not stay on seeing the smoke signal. If he is refused per-
mission to go, he takes leg-bail, leaving behind him his clothing and all the
property which his master has given him.

A native, when conveying a white man's message, is likewise allowed to
pass ?afe, even through hostile territory. He carries in his hand a piece of
stick with a notch at the end, and fixed in this is a piece of white paper,
having the message written on it. To attack, or injure, or impede this
messenger is to raise a feud with the whole tribe of white men.

In Eiji, a messenger sent by the king carries with him rods or reeds of
various lengths ; as he delivers each message, he lays down the reed corre-
sponding thereto, and so on until they are all in a row before him.

In Africa, also, similar institutions are found ; for, on the Gold Coast
there are tribal messengers, who carry as their credentials the message canes
or swords of the head men. There, too, the succession in the tribe passes,
not to the son of the present holder of rank, but to his brother, or, failing a
brother, to a nephew. A traveller in the Soudan many centuries ago,
observes : — " No one here is named after his father, but after his maternal
uncle. The sister's son always succeeds to the property in preference to
the son." There, also, the heir must be born of a female of their own race.
" Ask them to trace back their race for a few generations, and they will
ultimately inform you of some mysterious connection between their original
progenitor and a hawk, a lion, or a wolf." "A tradition exists that the
whole of these people were originally comprehended in twelve families or
tribes, of which Aquonna will not eat 'buffalo ' (quonna), Essona will not
eat ' bush cat' (esso), and so on. Priendship exists between these families,
even although they be of diiferent nations, and inheritance is claimed." I
quote this, because it explains the origin of ' totemism ' in our Australiaii
tribes in relation to their internal classification according to the view which
I have given of it.

To the same effect is the following quotation from the "Equatorial
Africa," of Mons. Paul du Chaillu : — " This day I had a glimpse at another
curious superstition of these people. One of the hunters had shot a wild
bull, and, when the carcase was brought in, the good fellow sent me an
abundant supply of the best portions. I had a great piece boiled for dinner,
and expected [my friend] Quengueza to eat as much as would make several
hungry white men sick. Judge of my surprise, when, coming to the table
and seeing only the meat, he refused to touch it. I asked why. ' It is
roondah for me,' he replied. And then, in answer to my question, he
explained that the meat of the Bos braahikeros was forbidden to his family,

ffi-

0,>,m^.^) ON A TREE AT THE UPPER BORA CIRCLE

n

PHOTO-UTHOGRAPHED AT THE GOVT. PRINTING OFFICE,
SYDNEY. NEW SOUTH WALES.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 43

and was an abomination to them, for the reason that, many generations ao-o,
one of their women gave birth to a calf instead of a child. I laughed ; but
the king replied very soberly that he could show me a woman of another
family whose grandmother had given birth to a crocodile, for which reason
the crocodile was ' roondaK to that family. Quengueza would never touch
my salt beef, nor even the pork, fearing lest it had been in contact with the
beef. Indeed they are all religiously scrupulous in this matter ; and I found
on inquiry afterwards that there was scarcely a man to whom some article of
fopd is not ' roondali.' Some dare not taste crocodile, some monkey, some
boa, some wild pig, and all from this same belief. They will literally suffer
the pangs of starvation rather than break through this prejudice, and they very
firmly believe that if one of the family should eat of such forbidden food,
the women of that family would surely miscarry and give birth to monstros-
ities in the shape of the animal which is ' roondali^ or else die of an awful
disease. Sometimes I find that the fetich man forbids an individual to touch
certain kinds of food for some reason, or no reason rather. In this case, the
prohibition extends only to the man, and not to his family." Then as to the
law of succession, he says : " It is very singular that among all these people
descent and inheritance are taken from the mother. The son of a Camma
man by a woman of another tribe or nation is not counted a Camma ; and,
if we narrow it down to families, to be a true Abouya — a citizen of
Groumbi — it is necessary to be born of an Abouya woman. If only the
father were Abouya, the children would be considered half-breeds." Another
author says : — " The snake is the tutelary god of Whydah, as the leopard
is that of Dahomey, and, according to African custom, the Dahomans, when
they acquired Wydah, adopted the local divinity." And again: — "The
alligator is sacred to Dixeove, the hysena at Accra, the iguana at Bonny,
the leopard at Dahomey, and the snake at Whydah."

VI.-SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC.

rp Australians are naturally a merry, laughter-loving race, and,

" , ' in this respect, they resemble the Papuans, but are quite un-
like the Malays. This matter of temperament is a good test
of the kinship of a race ; for it is not subject to fluctuations, unless the race
is swamped by a permanent amalgamation with a different race. An
American Indian carries his impassive temperament on his face wherever
he is ; but if we examine the typical character of our Australians as a whole,
it is true of them that they are lively and merry ; their countenances,
especially those of the young women, tell us that they are so ; and if any
one of us were seated at a native camp-fire after dark, and heard the stories
that are told there, and saw the merriment and the laughter and the fun,
we could not doubt that it is their nature to be happy, if their environment
permit. This is also one of the characteristics of the African negroes ; for
it seems natural for them to be in good spirits, and this happy temperament
promotes their vitality. Our Australian is a great coward when brought into
contact with the unknown, especially if he can regard the thing as having some
relation to the domain of spirits. One day when a blackfellow was present,
one of my boys was blowing soap bubbles ; the man was frightened when he
saw them, and ran round the corner to hide from them. So his anger, and his
courage, too, when roused by provocation or taunts, soon ebb away ; he
strikes suddenly, but straightway he is cool again ; a black man has been
known to spear his brother in a fit of passion, but as soon as he saw the evil
he had done he burst into a paroxysm of grief and flung himself on the

44. THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

prostrate body with weeping and wailing. Their natural affections are
keen ; in proof of this I need only refer to their grief over a dead relative,
even though it be a very young child ; they utter loud lamentations and cut
and burn the flesh of their bodies in grief. This expression of grief is
not all artificial or professional, like the hired ' ululatus ' of the Eomans
or the ' keening ' of the Irish. That it is genuine on the part of the near
relatives of the deceased I can prove by examples. Jackey, the ' king ' of
the Gresford blacks, died and was buried ; his mother could not be induced
to leave the spot ; she sat there night and day, refusing food, until one
morning she was found dead on his grave. She was buried beside her son ;
and, not long after, a little dog that had belonged to the old woman was
also found dead on her grave. These are facts. Then again, the transport
of delight with which Buckley was received by a woman, of a local tribe
who believed that this white man was her deceased son come to life again, is
a proof of the strength of natural affection among them. Another native
mother similarly rejoiced over Sir George Grey when he first penetrated
into the interior of South Australia.

Much that is said of native inhumanity is not true ; and so I add a few
facts for the truth of which I can vouch. A woman of the Dungog tribule
had a child which was hunch-backed and otherwise deformed ; she carried it
on her back for eighteen or nineteen years ; it seemed always no bigger than
a child of six or seven years. Her husband also carried about, for two or
three years, a son whose feet from the ankles had been destroyed by frost-
bite. At Durham Downs (Queensland), ' king ' Brady had a little boy two
years old, who became helpless from disease ; the mother carried him about
with hor for many years. When a man is sick, his brother or other near
relative has to tend him and go out hunting to provide him with food. " I
had a black boy," says my friend, " who was about 20 years of age ; he
came to me asking permission to leave my service ; for, he said, his brother
was sick, and he was I'equired to carry him about and get him food ; if he
did not go he would be killed." Again, this same 'king' Brady showed how
a blackfellow can have the sentiment of gratitude. In his wandering life he
had frequently received kindness from a storekeeper of the name of Adair,
whose place was on the Connors River ; on one occasion, when the river was
in high flood, Adair attempted to swim his horse across, but was swept away
by the torrent. Six white men were there looking on, afraid to give help ;
' king ' Brady, who was a very powerful man, above six feet high and well
developed, swam in when Adair was about to go down the third time, and
rescued him. This he did without the offer of reward ! And now I give
two instances of obedience, both of them taken from the experience of my
friend, Mr. M. On one occasion, the master called his black woman servant
towards dusk, and said to her, " Mary, you may now go for the cows,"
giving a wave with his hand to show where the cows were. Mary went off,
and did not return for several days ; when she came back, it turned out that
the poor woman took it to mean that she was to go to the Balonne Kiver — a
distance of 50 miles. And she went ! " One morning," said my friend to
me, " all our station horses were missing. At that time we had two young
black boys about 12 and 14 years of age. Thiuking that the horses had
only strayed to a little distance, we sent these two boys to look for them.
The boys did not return that day, nor the next, nor the next, and we con-
cluded that the boys had finally left us and joined their black friends in the
bush. But after a week's absence, the two came back, bringing all the
horses with them. The boys had tracked the horses across a country
covered with thick scrub, to a river forty miles distant ; there they

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 45

got them into a comer and tried to catcli them, but without success, for the
horses bolted ; faithful to their task, the boys then followed them 25 miles
down the river to D.Gr.'s place ; there they ran them into his stockyard and
put up the rails, thus securing them. All this time they had subsisted
on such native food— opossums, roots, &c. — as they could find. D.Gr. now
gave them food and supplied them with halters for the horses ; the boys then
rode the horses back to our place, barebacked. In this faithful service they
must have travelled at least 150 miles, if we reckon all the wanderings they
had in tracking." The same friend also said to me once : " On the discovery
of the gold-fields all our white men left us, and we were for a long time
entirely dependent on our black servants ; they were always good, and
useful, and obedient, and I cannot help liking the blacks because of their
fidelity to us."

Some of those instances rather belong to a section on the moral and
intellectual character of our Australians, but I have introdaced them here
because they have crossed my path at this point.

p , Anyone who has seen the bare back or breast of an Australian

Jfersona black man or woman will have observed various well-marked scars

jsran s there. These I shall call ' mombarai ' — a local native word in
and Urna- ^^^ ■^ovX\l Wales which answers to the English word 'brand. '

ments. And although the other aboriginal dialects have different words

to designate these scars and marks, yet here also it would be convenient if
all would agree to use some one word to mean the same thing, when speaking
of things Australian. ' Mombarai' is also used to mean a mark of owner-
ship on an opossum cloak or on a tree in the forest. Por example, the
honey of the wild English bee or of the native bee, which is much smaller,
is an important article of food to the black ; when he sees these bees
frequenting a hole in a tree, he knows a nest is there ; or if he sees a single
bee within reach, he catches it, fixes a tiny piece of white down on its body,
and then sets it free ; as it flies he follows it, and his acuteness of vision
enables him to track it to its nest in a tree. In either case he marks his
'mombarai' on that tree, till he can return and cut it down. The next
blackfellow who passes that way will not touch the tree, for he recognises
the ' mombarai,' and knows by it whose the tree is.

It is usually said that the 'mombarai' on the body have no significance,
and that the women have them merely for ornament and to add to their
attractiveness. I can scarcely believe that there is no meaning in these marks.
I think it likely that, like trade-marks among us, each family has its own
'mombarai; ' for a friend tells me that he had an opossum cloak made for
him long ago by a man of the Kamalarai tribe, who marked it with his own
' mombarai.' When this cloak was shown to another black some time after,
heat once exclaimed, " I know who made this; here is his 'mombarai.'''
To make this brand on a cloak, the maker folds the material at the place
where he wishes the brand to be, and presses the fold ; then, with the sharp
edge of a cockle-shell or a piece of flint, or some more modern instrument, he
scrapes off the pelt or the hair where the device is to be, until the pattern is
formed. On the human body the brand is cut with a piece of a flint or of a glass
bottle in some simple pattern, usually in corresponding portions, on both
sides of the breast-bone, and sometimes on the back as well ; the cuts bleed
a good deal, and to make them deeper the knife is applied again and again.
While the wounds are still open, hoar frost is rubbed in, or charcoal, and
that causes well-marked ridges to remain permanently there. I imagine that,
if we could trace these customs far enough back, we might find some religious

46 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

ideaatthobasoof themall; foreventheraostseiiselessdisfiguremontsof fasliion
do not orif^inate in mere caprice ; Ihero is alwajN siome roason for them. And I
am tho more persuaded that there is signilieance in those scars, because I know
that in the Miiiyun<2; tribe they are not all made, at once ; there a lad is
'raurrawon' when he has got the scars on th(^ back, and he becomes
' kumban-gari ' when the scars are made on his breast. At all events, they
may serve the same purpose as the blazon on a seaman's arms or breast, and
be useful in identifying a man's body if he has been disfigured on the field of
battle ; or, like tho knocking out of the front tooth in the Bora ceremonies,
the marks may help to identify him as a true blackfoUow when he dies and
descends to spirit-land.

All blaekfellows are more or less marked on the body in this way, but noi!
on tho fii'-e ; the thing is done when tho person is young, perhaps from 6 to
12 years of iige ; tho marks may be found also on the hips and the upper arm,
and, in the case of women, between tho breasts and down the back.

p ^ , Here I include the nose ornament, the dressing of tho hair,
A 1 , the head band, and the necklace. (Jthor articles of wear arc for
, ' dress. The nose ornament was worn by men ; J say was, for,
like other aboriginal customs, it has disappeared. Tho septum of
the nose was pierced in youth, and two or three straight bits of tough grass
were passed through the perforation and left there ; when the wound healed,
these were removed and athieker pencil of grass inserted ; and tlius gradually
the hole was enlarged until it was fit to receive permanently a longish bone
which was scraped thin at the ends, and stuck out from the nose somewhat
like the long waxed ends of an imperial moustache. I. suppose that a black
jnan thoughtthat this adjunct to his nose-tip improved his jjersonal ayipearance
or made him look terrible in battle ; but, as in tho (.'ase of the body scars, I
believe there is some religious significance; at the base of it originally ; for, in
certain localilies, the blacks saythat iiidessa man'snoso has been thus jiierced
his spirit will be subjected to great indignities when lu; is dead. Heneo
the women also wear the nose-bone.

Our blacks allow their hair to grow wild ; they merely cut it when it is too
long. i\Iany of them, both men and women, have fine frizzly hair; others
have straight hair ; in fact, in some districts, the frizzly and curly hair seems
to prevail, and in others the straiglit hair. So also the beard and moustache
are, in some persons, abundant and bushy; in others, scanty, or nearly
absent. But for special occasions, the men used to bind up their hair into a
conical bunch upon their heads and keep it together below with a meshed
net. Tho whole had the shape of tho head and shoulders of a beer-bottle,
The net was made of hair or of fibre from jjlants or from bark. 'J'o improve
the appearance of this fillet, and at the same time to adorn the head, feathers
from native birds were inscirfed in it in front, while at the sides strings of
kangaroo teeth were made to hang down on tho temples ; and from the back
part of it, the bushy tail of a native dog hung down like a qur.ne.

The necklaces wore worn by women and young girls. They usually wore
made of short lengths of a thin rood which were strung on a eonl — like the
ner:klaces of tube beads worn hy our children. .'In Nortliern Quermslarjd, sea-
shells are ground and strung into ne';klaces, and elK(!\vhere kangaroo 1x;e,th
are tastefully fastened to a strip of kangaroo skin, which is then worn as a
neck ornament. Our native women do not seem to care for pr;rsonal
adornment, nor do they use flowers or gay colour.', for that jiurpose; and in
this respect they are in striking contrast to the Bolynesian.s.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 47

Tho articles of dress and olothinc; used by our men and women are few
and soauty. The most important is a large cloak, made of the furry skin of
the ojiossum or the wallaby. This is worn only in sickness and in the coldest
part of the year, but it is seldom seen now in the occupied parts of the
colonies, becaiise everywhere, on Queeu's Birthday, blankets are issued to
all blacks who choose to come and ask for them. The labour required to
prepare a cloak was considerable. Perhaps thirty or forty skins must be
secured — good skins, with plenty of fur on them. These were dressed by
pegtriiig them each on a piece of bark to dry there. The inner side was theii
carefully scraped clean with a shell-knife. They were then cut into a proper
shape, aud sewed together. Tlio finer sinews of a kangaroo were the thread,
and the needle was of bone. This cloak or rug hangs over the shoulders,
being merely tied round the neck by the hind legs, and fastened with a JibiiJa
of bone or of wood in front. The more artistic owners of clo.aks, both men
and women, ornament the inside of them with native devices, plain or
coloured. The cloak is not worn in camp ; there the heat of the fire is
enough. A kangaroo skin, with the hair worn inwards, is a favourite kind
of cloak in wet weather.

The only other article of clothing was the loin cloth. For men this was
merely a strip of hide fastened round the loins, and from it were suspended
two or four flaps of skin and fur, one in front and one behind, and two more on
the outside of the thighs to kei?p these in countenance. Sometimes an oblong
piece of hide was cut into narrow tas:s or cords, depending from a fillet left
tmcut, aud thi^ was substituted for the flaps before and behind. The young
females wore a girdle of o]iossum f nr, and at the native dances the women
put on a deeper apron, formed of the neck feathers of the emu. In some
places, their ordinary dress was a girdle of narrow strips of bark, with the
bones of deceased friends hanging among them.

The man, when travelling, also wore a waist-belt, in which was placed his
tomahawk, his amulet of crystals, his tobacco-pipe (if he had one), and any
other things which he thought it necessary to carry with him. This sash
was strongly made of twine or reedy tibre, twisted and knitted together, and
was more for utility than for clothing. Of the same kind is the htinger-
belt. T\"'hen on an expedition, it was not .ilways possible for a man to obtain
food ; so, when pressed by hunger, he could only tighten his belt and hurry
on. It is made of hide with the fur on ; but, as the hide is next the man's
skin, the belt can take a good grip.

-Vnother article maybe mentioned here as part of a black man's clothing ;
but we now, in our country, would scarcely reckon it as such, although, even
in Britain —

'■Time was when clothing, sumptuous or for use.

■Save their own paiuted skins, our sires hail none.''

A black m.an fortifies his body a^rainst the influences of weather and clim.ate
hr anointing it regularlv. The fat is saved from the animals which he kOls,
and with this he rubs his body all over, and lets it soak into the skin when
liquefied by the rubbing or the heat of a fire or of the sun. To iieighten the
oi?eof, he will also mix with the fat his favourite pigment, ruddle, the red
oxide of iron. The fat of the o;au is preferreil, or the oil of the mutton
binl, when the tribe has access to the coa>t. The hair, also, is greased with
the same material, and. as it is net washed, it becomes a matted mass, or hangs
down' in tangles on the neck. In my district, however, the hair is clean.
Either the fashieu of using animal grease never esisied, or the tribe has left
ir on'.

48 THE ABORIGINES OE NEW SOITTH WALES.

At this point these aboriginal customs may he . compared with similar
usages among black tribes in other parts of the world ; for comparative
ethnography is as instructive as comparative grammar and philology.

At Port Moresby, in New Gruinea, the young women wear a grass petti-
coat, and their bodies are so beautifully tattooed that they seem to be covered
with the finest lace. The men are nude, and their faces only are tattooed, but
that slightly. They blacken their faces with a mixture of soot and gum, and
then sprinkle them over with white. Married women have their hair cut
close. At Motu, on the same coast, not only the wives, but the children are
shaven, and that is also done as a sign of mourning. The hair is sometimes
straight, but for the most part it is frizzly, and apt to become like a mop.
In colour it is brown-black. In Australia it is always a glossy black, although
a few instances of reddish hair have been observed. The Motu people have
the nose-stick, and wear a profusion of ornaments — heavy ear-rings, one or
more armlets on the upper arm, and necklaces of pigs' or dogs' teeth for the
women.

The Negrilloes of the Andaman Islands cover their bodies with a wash of
white clay during the hot weather. Doubtless they find that this white
colour makes the heat more supportable. In the Dekkan of Indian, and
among the tribes there of the Dravidian race, there is a curious custom,
which shows how tenacious of life an old mode of dress may be when the
inroads of civilisation have displaced it in favour of more modern attire. In
a small community there of the slave caste, the women wear gowns, but over
these, all round their buttocks, they put on an apron of twigs and green
leaves woven together. They think it shameful to appear without this. The
Bechuanas of Southern Africa, in .Livingstone's time, much resembled our
Australians in the simplicity of their clothing. The men wore in front an
apron about a span wide, and on their shoulders the dressed hide of a sheep
or antelope. To support the heat by day and the cold by night, they smeared
their bodies as our tribes do and they anointed the hair. The women had
the breast and abdomen bare, but round their waist was a cord, and from
it depended in front a lot of leather strings, about 18 inches long. On their
shoulders was flung a cloak similar to that worn by the men.

o7 ,, The Arabs and other nomads dwell in tents. This is not so

, much a matter of choice as of necessity. A people whose
y, jj ■ circumstances make them wander about from pasture to pasture

•' ' are deterred from raising permanent structures. They carry
their houses with them, or put up temporary shelters wherever they encamp.
Our blackfellows have not reached the pastoral stage, and yet they are
wanderers. If they settle down at any spot for a few days, the food they get
there by hunting or from roots may soon be exhausted, and they must move
on; or a death occurs among them, and they flee from the spot ; or they may
come to imagine that their enemies, the evil spirits, are too numerous or too
busy there, and so they decamp. When they reach a suitable place for a
fresh camp, the women set to work and raise wind-shelters, called ' gunyas.'
These are very simple affairs. Two strong sticks are fixed upright in the
ground, each about 4 feet high, and having a fork at the upper end ; across
these forks a ridge-pole is laid ; then leafy boughs or other materials are laid
aslant from the ground to this pole ; and thus the black woman's house is
complete. The back of it has been so placed as to be a shelter from the wind,
and if privacy is wanted — and blacks do not consider that as one oi the
essential wants of life — the opossum cloaks and a few skins -will cover in the
front and the sides. A fire is made in the open in front, and with dry grass

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 49

for a bed witliin, and a log, it may be, for a pillow, the ' mari' and his ' jin,'
turning their feet to the fire, lie down happily content, and sleep the dark-
ness of the night away. But wherever the ' taurai' contains a large lagoon,
plentifully supplied with fish, or gives access to the sea, or otherwise con-
tains the prospect of a continuous source of food, larger and more permanent
structures are reared as houses. In the building of these the men take their
share of the work. These huts are in shape something like a round dish-
cover, 6 or 7 feet high, and will hold a family of twelve persons ; a portion
may bei partitioned off as a separate room. Ton enter by a small door-opening,
and the fire is in the centre of the hut. Or several families may choose to
live together on some dry place near a river or lake. The blacks wisely avoid
sites that are marshy or under trees. The huts are then built contiguous,
like a terrace, all of them facing a central fire-place, which is common
property. These substantial huts are framed with branches of trees and small
logs fixed in the ground at one end, which are so sloped that they nearly meet
at the other end ; the whole is thatched with grass, or covered with sheets
of bark and turf and foliage. The coast natives of Tasmania also built
substantial huts, each of which would hold a score of people. They were
thatched with reeds in neat and regular tiers. The Australians did not learn
the art of building from the white settlers ; for Captain Sturt, when he first
penetrated into the interior, sixty years ago, found such huts there. " On the
Macquarie E-iver," he says, " several huts were observed by us, and from the
heaps of muscle-shells that were scattered about, there could be no doubt of
its being much frequented by the natives." And of the tribe farther west,
he says, " The natives of the Darling are a clean-limbed, well-conditioned
race, generally speaking. They seemingly occupy permanent huts. . . .
They lacerate their bodies, but do not extract the front teeth." Elsewhere,
as in some parts of South Australia, the natives make use of any stone that
may be handy, and raise stone walls for their huts. In the north-west, Sir
George G.rey found erections of stone, which may have been used for shelter.
But in the interior of Australia, and in the far north, there are extensive
limestone formations, and there the natives are saved the trouble of building ;
for the caves in the limestone ridges give them an easy home. Here, also,
they have room to display their love of art; for on the flat parts of the walls
of these caves they carve figures of alligators, or pictures of fights between
themselves and the colonists, all in red and white.

T-, , It is evident, then, that the food-question is the one that
" ■ determines a blaclifellow in the choice of a habitation. If
food is abundant, there he and his tribule will remain for a long time. It is
thus that shell-mounds and oven-mounds are found in various parts of
Australia ; but they were specially numerous within the territory of Victoria.
Their size, and the quantity of material they contain, are a proof that the
natives of many successive generations must have made their residence there
from year to year, while the supply of food lasted, returning again when the
food season came round. On one estate in Victoria, there were eight or nine
of these mounds, all near each other, and at a distance they looked like ordinary
hay stacks. The largest was about 125 feet by 50 feet by 12 feet. ' It had
been much broken down by the trampling of cattle and sheep, and therefore
at one time was much larger. The material of all such heaps is soil, ashes,
wood-charcoal, charred bones of the animals on which the natives feed,
native implements, pieces of flint, and the remains of the hard silicious stones
which are used for lining the oven and retaining the heat when it is covered
in. On the sea coast also there are many shell-mounds, or ' kitchen middens,'
which contain, in addition, great quantities of the remains of the (ihell-fish

50 THE ABOEIG-INES OP NEW SOUTH WALES..

common on ttat coast. One of these, near Cape Otway, was measured, and
found to be 30 feet in diameter and 5 feet deep. Occasionally a human
skeleton has been found in the mounds, as if the blacks had chosen that as
the softest place for digging the grave of a deceased friend. The mounds
are, in all cases, near to fresh water, for that is essential to the daily life of
the people. The American mounds in the valley of the Ohio and Mississippi
seem to correspond with these oven-mounds in Australia.

And now, it is natural for us to ask what causes can have induced the
natives always to frequent the same spot for cooking purposes, and to do so
from age to age, until the monnds assumed their present dimensions ; the
whole thing is so unlike their usual habits. And then the mounds are so
large that I can scarcely suppose that one single tribule has made any one
of them even by the labour of ages. Either the local bands of blacks must
have been numerous as swarms of bees in the past, and more steady in their
habits than now, or there must have been occasions on which they assembled
there in greater numbers than usual. I am inclined to think that the latter
is a reasonable explanation, and that such ceremonies as those of the Bora
and the Mindi-mindi drew the blacks together from all quarters and in great
numbers, and kept them on the same spot for months at a time while the
ceremonies lasted ; thus the heaps would grow apace from the quantities of
food consumed. In this view 1 am confirmed by the statement that these
mounds are often found on the margin of a forest. This is the very position
they would have if they were near the larger circle, around which the whole
multitude assembled when the ceremonies of initiation were about to begin.
And if these ceremonies were from time to time repeated at the same place,
and the Mindi marljets were also held there as a sacred place, I can easily
understand how these mounds have grown. This, however, is merely a
suggested explanation.

But there is proof that the blacks do gather from great distances and in
great numbers and remain together while the temporary supply of food lasts.
I refer to the annual feasting in the Bunya-bunya country. This is about
50 miles to the north of the town of Dalby in Queensland, and is named
from the native trees — a kind of pine with prickly leaves — which ai'e very
abundant in that locality. The Bunya-bunya tree, in the proper season,
bears a fir cone of great size — 6 to 9 inches long — and this, when roasted,
yields a vegetable pulp, pleasant to eat and nutritious. When the fruit-
season approaches, the blacks may be seen journeying to that part of the
country from distances of hundreds of miles, and there they remain feasting'
on till they are as fat as porpoises. Every third and seventh year there is
said to be a larger crop than usual and consequently a larger and longer
feast. Nature has been bountiful in providing such a tree and in such
abundance for the natives of that portion of Queensland ; for this vegetable
food restores their health, which often suffers from their constant diet of
animal flesh.

jSTo other part of Australia, so far as we know, is so kind to the blacks ;
many parts are inhospitable, and there the natives have a hard struggle to
live ; hence comes the pinched and dwarfed carcase Vv'hich many of them
have to carry about all their lives. But in many other places, and especially
near the rivers, there are indigenous trees which are fruit-bearing ; to these
the natives come in the season. Even far in the interior there are such
trees ; for the M'Kiolay expedition in 18G1 found the inland natives roasting
a round fruit, " which in very good." Almost all kinds of berries and seeds
and some kinds of gum are collected and used as food ; the soft root part of
water-Hags is eaten, and the soft pith of the fern-tree and grass- tree. Solutions

SOCIAL A5D DOMESTIC.

of gums and macerations of several kinds of flowers sweetened with honey
are taken as a nutritious mucilage, and weeds such as 'pig-face' and 'fat-hen'
are like our vegetables. The seeds of grasses are pounded and made into a
sort of bread. On Cooper's Creek in the interior, the seeds of the 'nardu'
plant — a kind of fern — are used in this way ; but when eaten by our white
explorers in their distress, this food was found to be indigestible and to
contain little nutriment.

Then there are many sorts of esculent bulbs, which the colonists call by
the general name of ' yams' ; these, it is the duty of the women and the girls
to search for and dig up with ' yam- sticks,' for the use of the household. A
root much used by the blacks on the east coast is the ' tank.' This is a vine
which sends its tendril up to the tops of the highest trees, but the root is at
first single and tuberous ; as it goes down, it splits into two and becomes
thicker as it goes ; the roots descend 10 or 12 feet. Near the surface the
root is about the thickness of one's iinger ; farther down as thick as a man's
wrist. The blacks dig a hole round the roots, take out as much as they
require for a meal, roast it, and en,t it. At their leisure they return for
more. ' Tara' is the root of a kind of lily ; that is heated at the fire by the
women ; it is then pounded hard together bit by bit to remove the acrid taste
it has.

But when "a time of drought sets in, and the drought continues for one,
two, or three years, as it has done sometimes in the interior of the country,
the ' taurai' or food-ground becomes as bare and dry as a macadamised road ;
then ensues a time of hardship for the tribe, and fortunate it will be for
them if they have access to a river or a lake. Our blacks are expert fishers,
and have many modes of obtaining food in that way. One of their weapons
is a fish-spear with three prongs, barbed. When our telegraph line was first
carried across the continent to Port Darwin, on the north coast, to connect by
cable with India, and thence to Europe, frsqueut interruptions occurred on
the overland sections ; the repairers found that the wires had been broken
by the blacks and pieces taken away for the making of the prongs of their
fish-spears. When a boy, the black man has been trained to dive and remain
for a time under water ; now, armed with a fish-spear, he jumps itito the
river wherever large fish are to be found ; walking on the bottom with his
eyes open, he dislodges the lazy fish from their lairs and kills them, or spears
the smaller ones as they hurry past him.

Though wonderfully dexterous in this, the black man does not trust himself
to his spear alone for success. At Brewarrina, on the Upper Darling, there
is an ingenious fish-cage constructed in the river by the natives, and called by
the settlers the " Eisihery." The fish, which we call the "Murray cod,"
come up here, of all sizes, from 4 to 40 lb. weight. Here they lodge in the
deep holes, and, feeding on muscles and smaller fish of their own and other
kinds, they attain to a huge size, sometimes weighing as much as 120 lb.
To catch these fish of the smaller size, the blacks took advantage of a " falls"
or shelving part of the river just below a crossing-place, and placed in the
river, from bank to bank, a solid wall of stones, each about as large as two
men could carry. Below this weir, they laid in the river other stone walls at
right angles to each other, much like the dividing lines of a chequer-
board, thereby forming open spaces, each 8 feet square, and about
3 feet 6 inches deep. In these walls, which cross each other, they left
small slits open from top to bottom and about 15 inches wide, thus large
enough to let a fish of 40 lb. pass through. The wall of the weir next
the ford was made the most substantial of all to resist the force of
the current in the river. It also rose higher out of the water, the others

52 THE ABOEIGINES OP NEW SOUTH WALES

being just so much lower as to cause a slight ripple over them. This fish-
trap is ingeniously constructed ; for the builders of it, knowing the habits of
the cod-fish, have so arranged the slits in the lower walls that the fish, in
going upwards, can proceed only in a zigzag direction, and as they never try
to turn back, they at last are collected in great numbers in all the squares,
but mostly in the upper ones, from which there is no exit, as the wall is solid
throughout. The river is here about 800 yards wide. Meanwhile, our
blackfellows are standing on the tops o£ all the stone walls, and ply their
spears with such effect that tons of fish are landed on the bank. At such a
time, when the fish are abundant, the fishers cannot use a tithe of the fish
they catch, and so sell them to all comers at a few pence- for a backful. As
for themselves, they have a noble feast, they and all their tribe ; and, as is
their habit whenever they have abundance, they gorge themselves so that
their bodies are swollen to unnatural dimensions and seem ready to burst.
When they can hold no more, they go to sleep like snakes, and sleep for
twenty-four hours or more. In my district, Bundiibilla once ate so much
beef at a meal that he had to be buried up to the neck in a pit of moist
sand — a native cure — for two hours, in order to sweat off the surfeit. As
soon as he was taken out cured, he began to eat again ! Those ethnologists
who say that our A ustralian blacks are the lowest of savage races would do
well to visit the fishery at Brewarrina, and see with their own eyes how
inventive and industrious these blacks can be in their own way. At what
time in the past that fishery was made I do not know ; but this I do know,
that it is no despicable piece of rude engineering skill, and that much labour
must have been expended in bringing these' blocks of stone to the sjjot, and
some risk to life in placing them where they are.

In the Northern Territory, a similar example of labour maybe seen. The
Limmen Creek, at a part of its course, breaks into two branches or streams.
In order to form a cul cle sac in which they might intercept the fish, the
blacks closed the end of one of these branches with heavy logs, which had to
be dragged to the water with much labour, and placed securely in it ; and as
such streams are often flooded by heavy rains, and carry everything away, it
is probable that this barrier had to be frequently renewed. Such dams are
found in many other places, but this one was remarkable for the skill and
perseverance of its makers. On rivers and creeks in Eastern Australia,
wherever the water is not deep nor the current strong, two slight obstruc-
tions of this kind are put in, and into the pond thus formed leaves of a
native plant are thrown. The fish are soon seen to be stupified, and the
blacks wade in and catch them with their hands. In the rivers of Carpen-
taria and the northern coast there are small crocodiles, 6 or 7 feet long, very
harmless fellows, which live on fish and water fowl. The blacks spear and
eat them. At Twofold Bay and along the south-east coast there, a stranded
whale is a god-send to the tribes. When the news spreads, they come down
in multitudes to enjoy the feast, and, for many days, they may be seen, like
black ants, hurrying out and in to the body of the monster, even when the
smell of it would be enough to keep any of us at a considerable distance.'

Eish are also caught by net and by hook. In every family there is one girl
who has been appointed to fish with line and hook. She is easily recognised ;
for her hand wants the end of the little finger. In youth a tight ligature
was kept round the first joint, until the tip of the finger fell off. This is
done to make the finger more sensitive to the line in fishing.

Another article of food is eggs and grubs of all kinds. The eggs of such
a bird as the wild turkey or native bustard are large, and many of them in
one nest ; but a man or woman can cat a wonderful number of large eggs at

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 53

one sitting. Even if an egg is partly hatched, he does not reject it. The fat
grubs that are found in the ground or under the bark of trees are also dainty-
morsels when roasted, and white men who have eaten them say that they are
very palatable.

All kinds of reptiles are eaten — snakes, iguanas, lizards, and others, and
on the northern rivers, turtles. Even frogs are cast on the fire and then
eaten ; but a blackfellow will not eat a snake unless he has killed it himself
or seen it killed ; for he believes that the snake, when wounded, bites itself
in its pain and thus poisons its own flesh.

A novel kind of food is ants, but I can scarcely believe that they are
much eaten ; and yet a friend of mine saw a black woman put her naked
foot on the bed of some red ants, and when they swarmed up her leg, as ants
always do when thus disturbed, she scraped them off in handfuls and ate
them ! But young ants and ant-eggs dug from the beds are readily eaten.

Birds and fowl of all kinds are caught, cooked, and eaten — water-hens,
ducts, hawks, owls, pigeons, and smaller birds ; even the large emu is caught
in nets. Our blacks are exceedingly ingenious and dexterous in trapping
. and killing all these. They can imitate to perfection the call of every bird,
and thus decoy it and bring it within reach. If a man sees a pigeon on the
branch of a tree at a distance, he stealthily approaches, keeping the body of
the tree always between him and the bird until he is close to it, and then his
stick does not miss its mark.

Almost every native animal in the bush or on the plains is killed and
eaten. But an animal which is the ' totem' of any man's class is never
touched by that man ; to him it is sacred, and its flesh is ' thambara,'
'forbidden.' He thinks that the 'totem' watches over him, and gives him
warning in time of danger, and so he will not harm it. As to the large and
swift quadrupeds, you would think that it would be impossible for one man
alone to catch a kangaroo ; and yet he does it. A black man's eyesight is
very strong and 'acute ; he sees a kangaroo afar off grazing, long before it can
see him. Immediately he adjusts his ' bumarang' in his belt, to have it
ready for action, and slips away into the nearest thicket ; here he tears out
a bushy shoot, large enough to cover his body; he emerges and, carrying this
before him, he cautiously advances ; if the kangaroo looks around on hearing
the rustling sound, fearing an enemy, at once the black crouches behind his
screen and remains stock-still, as if he were a rooted sapling ; the kangaroo,
satisfied that there is nothing moving near, begins to graze again ; and so
the black gets near enough to give the fatal blow. When several kangaroos
are seen grazing together, a band of men will stalk them in the same way by
forming a circle ; and when at last the circle has closed in, and the quarry,
detecting the enemy, begin to hop away, they find a spear or a club every-
where near enough to stop their career.

P , . , . Asa rule, the blacks do not care to eat fatty matter ; hence
es ric ion ^^^^ reject pork ; they say it is too fat. The flesh of certain

"■' '"' ■ animals also they reject ; the Tasmanians, for instance, would
not eat their native tiger and native devil ; and our own blacks do not like the
flesh of the native bear because of its gummy taste. But in addition to
voluntary abstention from the flesh of, ' totem' animals, there are restrictions
of food which tribal law imposes. To a lad who has not yet passed the Bora,
food of certain kinds is absolutely prohibited ; and while he is still passing
through the stages of the Bora ceremonies, he is not allowed to eat the flesh
of every animal he may catch ; for the process of qualifying for full member-
ship may extend over several years. In his tender years, the boy has

54 THE ABOEIGINES OP NEW SOUTH WALES.

been taught that he must eat only the female of the opossum, or bandicoot,
or other animals ; all others that he gets must be brought to the
camp and given to the aged and those who haye large families ; when
he has attended one Bora, he receives permission to eat the male, say, of the
' paddymelon '; after another Bora, he may eat the ' sugar-bag,' that is, the
honey of the bee ; a step higher, and he may eat the male of the opossum,
and so on until his initiation is complete, and then he may eat anything.
An incident that occurred about fifty years ago will illustrate this matter.
A dray was travelling on the Great Northern Eoad, and, as the driver was
rather short of provisions, he said to his black boy, " Georgie, go and catch an
opossum ; we have no beef." Georgie soon got an opossum, and brought it
to the camping ground, but threw it down beside the fire. His master said,
" "Why don't you skill it, and roast it and eat it." Georgie replied, "Bail
(no) massa ; me loonnal yet-; you know me must not eat 'possum." "But,
Georgie, nobody will know ; nobody will see you." " The Kruben, he see
me ; he come and take me ; that fellow see everything," " Nonsense," said
his master, " tell him I bade you ; you eat." " Well, you are massa ; you
bid me eat, and I eat." And Georgie did eat at his master's bidding, and so
escaped the Kruben! His master told me the incident many years there-
after.

jT .■ Our blacks have many ingenious ways of hunting and catching

"'■ game, and thus of procuring food. Some of these ways have
already been referred to; but they also make use of nets for the same
purpose. They have nets for catching wild ducks. Beiug keen observers of
nature, they know the habits of the ducks, and arrange their plans accordingly.
Three or four men go together to a lagoon; two of them mentally calculate
the direction in which the ducks will fly, aiid how high they will rise when
disturbed, then quietly stretch a long net across from side to side, adjusting
it to any trees that may be near by ; the other man gets behind the ducks
and startles them suddenly ; they rise, but before they go far they find them-
selves entangled in the net, which the other blackfellows dexterously handle
so as to entrap the birds. A stronger net with a larger mesh is used for
catching the wallaby and the emu. Eor the wallabies, nets fixed on poles
are set upright at various distances near their haunts ; leading to these nets
' wings ' are formed of sticks and boughs, in the same way as is done in
South Africa ; the hunters then distribute themselves in such a manner
that when the covert is beaten up the animals hop onwards to the nets, and
are there despatched. The emus are too large and swift to be secured in
this way, and so the nets for them are spread at their drinking places.

The opossum is a nocturnal animal, and sleeps during the day in some
hole in a tree. A hungry black man likes opossum, and so looks for one.
In the forest he examines the lower trunk of the trees, and finds one which
an opossum must have ascended last night for his daily rest ; for, by the
comparative freshnpss of the scratches made by the claws, he can at once tell
how long it is since an opossum was there. IJnsliDging his tomahawk from
his belt, he makes a notch in the tree near tho ground, and in it he places
the big toe of his right foot ; resting on this and grasping the tree with his
left arm, he makes another notch farther up, in which to rest the big toe of
the left foot, and so up he goes with amazing rapidity and safety, until he
reaches the animal's lair ; if he can got his arm into the hole and pull out
his prey, so much the less labour for him ; but if not, he must ply his toma-
hawk until he digs it out. The same thing must be done for the nest of
the honey-bees ; for the bees have their combs far up in the hollow of a large
tree, and, as the honey may have been accumulating there for several years,

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 55

an enormous quantity of it is often got from one hive. If a native finds it
best to dig out the hive, he climbs the tree and cuts into the side where it is.
How he protects himself from the stings of the bees I do not know. But
often it is preferable to cut down the tree. Then ensues a great feast. The
honey is mixed with water in native buckets, and, as usual, the people eat
and drink to excess, which excess brings on the usual consequences of a
surfeit of sweet things.

■j~. The dog deserves notice as an auxiliary to our indigenes in

" ' their hunts. Long before the advent of the white man, the
Australians had tamed and domesticated the native dog of this island. It is
a wolf -like animal of a reddish colour, and with a fine bushy tail. In size it
is somewhat larger and stronger than a shepherd's dog. The first colonists
called it ' dingo,' a native name, and that name has established itself, and is
now the science-term for the ' dog of Australia,' although the same dog is
found also in !New G-uinea. But this name, like kangaroo, was originally
given in error, at a time when the native languages were imperfectly
understood ; for, in the dialect of the Sydney tribe, ' tingko ' means ' a bitch,'
while its general name for a native dog is 'warikal.' But whea the white
man came to these shores, and brought his dog with him, the natives ceased to
train their own dogs for the hunt, and now a native can scarcely be seen
anywhere in the bush without a following of two or three mongrels at his
heels. These dogs share his affections with his wife and children. He
tosses to them a portion of all his food, and at night he sleeps with them in
his bosom to keep him warm.

^ , . The only thing that remains to be said as to food is the cooking

"■ of it. That is easily done ; for in general, the smaller animals
that are taken as food get only a sight of the fire, and the flesh is eaten half
raw. A fire is always burning in a native camp ; or, if it is smouldering, it
can soon be blown into a blaze, when a little fresh i'uel is placed upon it.
G-rubs, lizards, fungi, and other small articles, are merely laid on the hot
ashes and forthwith eaten. Native bread, such as the colonists call ' damper,'
is made in the same way. The native seeds have been carefully pounded or
crushed into a coarse meal. This is mixed with water on a piece of bark for
a baking board. This dough is made up into a lump, which is put among
the ashes and covered over with them. In a very short time it is baked
enough to be used. Farinaceous roots are prepared in the same way as a
sort of pudding. When a native wants to cook a bird, he puts it in the
embers just as it is; he takes it out, when its stomach is swollen a little, and,
ripping up the stomach, he removes the entrails and strips off the feathers.
The kidneys, being a dainty bit, he probably eats as they are. With a skewer
he now fixes up the stomach, and puts the bird back into the fire until it is
fully cooked. Taking it out again, he pulls out the skewer, and drinks the
gravy which has collected in the body of the bird. With his tomahawk he
cuts out the backbone, and, seizingthe carcase, he bends the two portions out-
wards till the bones of the breast are exposed. These he takes out one by
one, and after sucking the meat from the ends of them he tosses them to one
and another of his dogs. When he has -satisfied his own hunger, he shows his
complacency by a grin and a ' ha-a,' and then he throws the leavings to his
less lucky companion, who has been unsuccessful in the chase, and who has
been sitting by all this time.

Tor cooking the larger animals, and for providing a family supply of food,
ovens are used, and the ovens themselves and the mode of cooking are
similar to those among the Polynesians. A hole is dug in the ground, and

56 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

is plastered with clay or mud ; the kindling is put in and the fuel heaped
on ; when the fire burns down, the emhers are raked out, and the oven is
lined with damp grass ; the fish to be cooked, or roots, or animals, all pro-
perly prepared, are now put in the hole in baskets, and the whole is covered
up with damp grass and earth above. This remains so all night, and in the
morning the contents are found nicely cooked. Several families may join
in making a large oven, each putting its own baskets in the oven. Eor
kangaroos, emus, native turkeys, and other large animals, the oven is lined
with hard stones instead of clay. The tail of the kangaroo is much valued
for a double reason ; the long sinews are pulled out from it, and dried and
stored; these are strong, and are much used for tying handles, &c., on native
weapons or tools, and for sewing ; the tail itself, after the hair has been
singed and scraped off, is roasted as it is, and is esteemed a delicacy. The
hair of the opossum, too, is valued for domestic uses. It is carefully taken
off before the animal is cooked, and the women of the household make it into
fine cord by twisting it on their knee with the hand, much in the same
way as the cobbler twirls his thread. The opossum is not skinned for cooking ;
the entrails are first taken out through an incision made in the breast ; the
cavity is then filled up with herbs, and the whole is roasted at the fire ; the
carcase is thus made to retain its juices, and, when cold, it can be carried
about as provisions and will keep for a considerable time. To keep blow-
flies from cooked food such as that, they hang it in the smoke of their fires.

^ ., 7. There is one kind of food that must be mentioned here,
■ although I believe that it was never common among all the
tribes, and the blacks in the settled districts, if questioned, will deny that it
was ever used by their tribes — I mean human flesh. Yet there can be no
doubt that they were cannibals, occasionally at least. And this custom
arose, not from the pressure of necessity, but, as I think, from quite another
principle. A native has the idea that the mental and moral, as well as the
physical, qualities of a man reside in his flesh or in his internal organs ; and
here even the classical nations of antiquity agree with him ; for they place
the seat of many of the passions and affections of humanity in the physical
heart, the liver, the reins, the bile. Hence he imagines that by eating the
heart or the liver of a brave or a wise man of his race, recently dead, he
acquires something of the wisdom and bravery of the deceased. The hand
of a white man was a valued morsel, because he who ate of it became partaker
of the manual dexterity of the victim. And so, in my district many years
ago, a ' jin ' was known to carry about in her bag the remains of the hand of a
stockman whom they had killed. And so it is also in Queensland after a
battle ; it is not the dead bodies of slain enemies that are eaten, but the bodies
of friends. These are put in a large oven just as they are, and, after a few
hours, are taken out and the choice parts are eaten. In another part
of Queensland the body is skinned before it is cooked, and the skin is
wrapped round a bundle of spears. To make this memorial more personal,
the hair of the head is left on it and the finger-nails ; it is carried about to
visit the places where the relatives of the victim are encamped ; and these
then make the usual lamentations for the dead.

Again, it is quite possible that the offering of hunjan sacrifices, and the
feast upon the sacrifice, in which the worshippers had to eat a portion of the
offering, may have had some share in leading men to cannibalism. There is'
no evidence whatever, nor even a suspicion, that our blacks ever offered
sacrifices ; but if, in the home of their origin, their first ancestors were, in
contact with a race that did so, the custom of eating the flesh may have been
copied from that race without adopting the sacrifice.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 57

At all events, if the origin of cannibalism in the far past be such as I
suppose, it is not hard to understand how easily the habit of eating human
flesh drifted from its original moorings, and began to spare neither aged
relatives nor children. A plump child is here considered a sweet mouthful,
and, in the absence of the mother, clubs in the hands of a few wilful men
•will soon lay it low. On one occasion, a grown woman, who was in very
good bodily condition, overheard some men plotting for her destruction ;
but, showing herself suddenly in the midst of their ])rcB morte deliberations,
' she so chastised them with the lash of her indignant tongue — and a black
woman can scold in the choicest of vituperation — that the conspiracy was at
once broken up. This habit of cannibalism is so established among certain
tribes in Queensland that it has passed iuto a by-word there. Some years
ago, when the increasing number of the Chinese was causing some uneasi-
ness at a portion of the coast, it became customary to say, jocularly, " Oh,
just send up country for the Diamantina Eiver blacks ; they will soon rid
us of them." But, in point of fact, Australian blacks do not like the flesh
of foreigners ; they say the flesh of a white man is too salt.

In closing this section on food and cooking, I need scarcely say that our
blacks had no knowledge of the working of metals, and used only wooden
water vessels before the white man came ; so all their food had to be put in the
fire, not on it. There was no cooking jby boiling, nor could they get hot
water, except by putting hot stones into the water in their buckets.

In this matter of Australian food and cooking, other lands present many
points of correspondence. The Kjians, too, were cannibals, and their ovens,
whether for cooking 'long 'pig ' or 'fat pig,' were much like those of
Australia. A hemispherical pit was dug from three feet to five or six feet in
diameter, according to circumstances ; the firewood was put in the bottom,
and on it a lot of stones that would bear the heat without cracking ; when
the fire burned down, the ashes were raked out, and the hot stones were thus
left in the bottom ; the pig, wrapped in large leaves, was laid on this, and
above it the bread-fruit, or ' taro,' or whatever else was to form part of the
meal ; the whole was then covered with a thick layer of leaves, and over that
a bed of earth. Two or three hours were needed for the heating of the
oven, and two or three hours more till the food was ready ; the food was
thus both baked and steamed. The ' ndalo ' (' taro ') of the Fiji larder is
the ' arum escwlentum.'' Like our Austrahans, the Fijians also catch fish in
fresh water by putting a native plant in the water to intoxicate them. In the
Chittagong district of South-Eastern India, the hill people do the same.
They form a dam in a stream, and put in it a certain kind of plant ; by it the
fish are stupified, and float on the surface belly upwards. They have also
an edible plant called ' tara,' something like asparagus. In the Dehli terri-
tory the Dherh caste will not eat hog's flesh. Our blacks too do not like
pork.

p. Essential to the art of cooking is the element of fire. Like

'^' other nations all the world over, the Australians have myths
about the origin of fire. One is— "Two men of their race, who are
now divine or, at least, astral, were journeying together. The only
food of the one was snakes and eels. One day, not being hungry, he
buried a snake and an eel. "When he came back to eat them, he saw-
fire issuing from the ground where they were. He was warned by his
companion not to approach; but he declared he did not fear the fire,
and boldly came near. Then a whirlwind seized him, and carried him
up 'above the sky,' where he and his companion still are, and he can be
seen any starry night." A Tasmanian legend is this : " Long, long ago, there

58 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

■was no fire in my country. Two blackfellows came ; they stood on the top
of a hill ; they threw fire like a star down amongst the black men, my
countrymen ; they (my fathers) were fricfhtened, and ran away. After a
while they came back, and made a fire — a fire with wood ; fire always now in
our land. These two blackfellows are now in the clouds. In a clear night
you can see them like two stars." These two legends are quite independent
of each other. The former conies from the blacks of my own district in New
South Wales, and was given to a friend of mine only ten years ago. The
other is at least thirty years old.

Eire is so necessary to their comfort that the blacks use the utmost care
never to be without it. On the march the women carry with tbem a piece
of smouldering wood of grass-tree or honeysuckle, or other suitable kind, so
as to be able to make a fire at once whenever the .party halts ; and, to provide
against accident to this piece of kindling, they also carry in their bags some
, o/V", . pieces of touchwood and the rub-sticks wherewith to make fire. To procure
,'. « Y fire two things are necessary — a piece of soft, fibrous wood on which to
y/^' operate, and a hard close-grained stick with which to operate; and there

are two ways of operating — by rubbing or by twirling the stick. A black-
fellow sets to work thus : he looks for a log or a detached piece of the
soft wood he requires, and, selecting a susceptible spot in it, he inserts there
his twirling stick upright. Round the point of it he places a little of his
touchwood or some dry grass, if it is handy. Now, applying the palms of his
two hands to the twirling stick, he makes it revolve very rapidly, and keeps
it going by shifting his hands in an instant to the top as soon as they have
slipped too far down for comfort. Heat i^ soon generated, and smoke
appears. With a very gentle wind from his mouth, this is encouraged to
burst into flame, and the whole thing is done so dexterously that in two
or three minutes he has kindling enough to make a fire. But the blacks
say that this is hard work, and, if they are -journeying with white men, thev
clamour for matches before they undertake it. If they are alone, unhappy
is the quarter of an hour to the ' jin ' who has suffered her piece of
kindling to go out, and has thus imposed the labour. In the other process,
the friction goes by rubbing, not by twirling. A longitudinal cut is made in
the piece of soft wood, and a small cross-cut about midway to receive the
touchwood or grass. The hard rub-stick is then passed vigorously and
swiftly along the groove, and in a very little time fire is obtained as before.
The rubbing method is more common than the twirling ; but the spread of
the white man's matches has rendered it here, as in Eiji, nearly obsolete.
If there is any chance that the natives, when travelling, may not find suit-
able wood for fire-making, they carry with them strips of bark of the ' iron-
bark' tree, which is very fibrous and fluffy, and therefore suited for kindling,
and a piece of the flower stalk or cane of the ' grass-tree' on which to operate.
In Western Victoria it is the thigh-bone of a kangaroo, at one end sharpened
to a point, that is used as the twirler. A small hole is bored in the cane
down to the pith as a socket for the twirler, or dry touchwood is stuffed into
the end of the cane. The twirling begins, and fire is produced as before.
In New Caledonia also, the natives, when on the move, carry with them a
lump of smouldering wood for the making of a fire. This method of drawing
out the semma flammas by friction has been known to all nations, and is
probably as old as the existence of man.

Duilii Life ^^ '^ fitting, a black man's day may be said to begin at nighu

■' -^ ■ If he has been fortunate in his hunting, he has a copious meal

whenever he returns to camp at stmset, and soon thereafter he ajid his

family retire to rest. But if they are at all wakeful or in a happy mood,

SOCIAL AIS'D DOMESTIC. 59

several families will sit late round the camp-fire and amuse themselves with
stories, or with narratives of what they have seen or heard or done in the
past, or with tales of adventure in battle or iourneying, or with jokes and
riddles. All the while they laugh heartily at anything that tickles them.
Here is a genuine blackfellow's riddle. " A long time ago there lived an old
woman of our tribe, who was so strong that she coald overpower any of tlie
men. So she used to catch young fellows and eat them. One day she
caught a young man, and left him bound in her ' gunya,' while she went to
a distance to cat some sheets of bark to wrap the body in before she laid it
in the fire where it was to be cooked. While she was away two young
women, who had observed her doings, slipped into the hut and released the
prisoner. They then hurried to the river ; and, first knocking some holes in
the bottom of the old woman's canoe to hinder pursuit, th«y all escaped safe
to the other side in another canoe. Meanwhile, the old dame returned, and
saw that her prisoner had gone. She hastily repaired her damaged canoe,
and crossed, but only to find the young man surrounded by his friends,
ready to defend him with their spears. She boldly advanced, heeding not
the spears thrown at her, although they were sticking in her body everywhere.
She had seized the young man, and was making of£ with him again, when the
great wizard of the tribe opportunely arrived ; and, giving magical power to
the blow, thrust her through and through with his spear. Thus the young
man was safe. Question . Who v/as this old woman ? Do you give it up ?
Well, then, it was a porcupine." Now, although there is not much ingenuity
in this riddle, yet it reveals two things— the existence of cannibalism, and
the belief that a wizard's magic can overpower all natural strength and every
opposing influence.

If the black man sleeps soundly, the evil spirits do not visit him during
the night ; but sometimes, especially vrhen, as I suppose, there has been too
much kangaroo or wallaby at the evening meal, a demon visits him and
carries him away roughly and rudely to its abode, drags him about, and puts
him in great fea'r ; but towards daybreak he is always brought back, and.
placed quietly in his own ' gunya.' He firmly believes that this kind of
nightly pastime is the pleasure of the evil spirit, and so he takes it kindly.
That affects his body ; but his own spirit or ghost also goes away on adven-
tures during the night. Ho believes that he has two spirits— a spiritual and
a physical ' ego ' — a sort of ' animus ' and ' anima.' Of this dual existence of
his, the mortal part ceases to exist after death, but the other lives on. But,
even in his lifetime, the ' anima ' or ' geist ' may leave his body for a while,
and then come back again, as when he is in a faint or in a sleep. After
sleep he remembers that his ' geist ' left him during the night, and went
forth on its own business or pleasure. After a faint ho knows that his
spirit went from him on some errand or other, but he also knows that it has
returned, and so he does not trouble himself much about that. _ Even
when he is dying and his spirit has gone, if a friendly wizard is near
and observes the accident in time, the spirit may be pursued and over-
taken, and broughb back, and the sick man lives again. But an evil
wizard, even when the man is well, may come during the night, aiid
by his arts take out his kidney fat. Then the man is sure to dio
soon. These are the only experiences which an Australian may have
during the night, unless he chances to awake for a time ; then he may hear
the evil spirits— which, in this instance, are only the voice of some native
animals— near his bed, talking to him or to each other, and doubtless niedi-
tating mischief. Then he looks anxiously towards his camp fire ; and, if he
sees ft still alight, he complacently falls asleep again ; for he knows that the

60 THE ABOEIGINES OP NEW SOUTH WALES.

fire will keep all evil influences far from him and liis. But our black man's
slumbers may be disturbed by more dangerous visitors than these. A
revenge party from a neighbouring tribe, with which there is an Unsettled
blood-feud, may have stealthily come in to the camp, and before he is aware
of their presence a spear may be driven through his body and pin him to the
ground ; and he or any other man may be taken as a victim ; for if any one
of the tribule that has done the wrong can be slain, then atonement is made
and the blood-feud is wiped out.

Before daylight they are all awake, and are soon astir. Their toilet does
not take much time, for it is of the simplest description. There is no night
gear to fold and lay away for its next use ; for they all sleep naked, or in
the coldest nights with only a fur skin over them. There are no morning
ablutions ; no brush and comb for the hair ; no garments to fix carefully on
the body ; for in their natural state the waist-belt and its appendages are
their only wear ; and so they are soon ready for the morning meal. And
thus the day's labours begin.

Any one who sees them at a meal will notice that the natives are careful
to destroy all the fragments which they leave ; they throw them into the
fire or bury them. Again, it has been noticed that they are always careful
of their sanitary arrangements, whether in camp or on the tramp. With a
stick they remove a piece of turf and dig a small hole, and, leaving there
what nature casts off, they cover it up again. Even water is strewn over
with rushes, lest any one treading on it should be defiled. All this seems to
arise from cleanliness ; but there is a deeper reason for it ; a black man
believes that any portion of himself, as his hair, or of the food he has left, if
found by a hostile wizard, may be used against him, and made up into a
charm to do him harm. Hence his care to destroy all that, or cover it from
view.

After breakfast the men of the camp set out on the hunt, and are probably
away all day ; if there is already enough of provisions at home, they lounge
about, making spears and other weapons, or fixing the tools or weapons
that they have. Nor are the women idle ; they go out, and with the yam-
stick dig up food-roots, gather seeds and wild tree-fruits or berries of plants,
collect eggs, and otherwise do their share in filling the family larder.
Within doors, if we may so speak, they busy themselves in spinning into
thread and cord the bundles of opossum hair which they have in their
baskets, or in making up the thread into nets and bags ; or in plaiting rushes
into baskets ; they also sew skins together to make rugs. The children,
meanwhile, have been enjoying themselves in their own way with games of
lively movement and exercise, such as children everywhere love to have ; or
they go to the river, girls and boys together, and enjoy themselves as much
in the water as they do on the land. They throw themselves in doubled
up, and thus make a great splashing noise. They pursue each other
in the water, and swim and dive like ducks. When they get bigger,
these children pass on to other employments ; the girls remain with their
mother and learn all she can teach them, and help her in her labours.
When he is 7 or 8 years of age, the boy goes forth with his father to the
chase ; here he learns to stalk the kangaroo, to recognise on a tree the
marks of an opossum's recent ascent, to knock down the pigeon from its
branch, to follow the honey-bee to its nest, and all other accomplishments
which, if he were in old England, would have been included under the name
of ' woodcraft.' He is thus early taught to exercise his faculty of observa-
tion, and he becomes quick of eye and acute in understanding all natural

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 61

phenomena, and in detecting the disturbances which the foot of man or of
beast has worked in the aspect of nature around him. And so, at a tender
age, he can tell, by the faintest tread on the grass or on the bare soil, by the
stones which the passing foot has upturned, or the pieces of dry wood broken
on the rocky ground, how many men have gone that way, and how long
before ; and thus he grows up to be a man, fit and capable, like his father
before him.

Perhaps a visitor from a distance, or a messenger arrives during the day.
He does not walk up to the door as we do, and forthwith announce himself ;
native etiquette forbids ; he makes a circuit behind the hut and then sits
down in front of it. He does not now look at anyone there, but his eyes
seem to roam in every other direction. Perhaps he takes out his pipe and
begins to smoke. After a while the person in the ' gunya ' speaks to him,
and all tongues are then unloosed. The following incident illustrates this
custom. Two blacks in my district were sent to gaol for a serious ofEence.
One of them died in gaol, and the other, on his release, went home. When
he approached the paternal residence, he made the usual circuit round it and
sat down. After a long silence his mother uttered a scream ; and, seizing a
tomahawk, she hacked her head in so savage a manner that her husband
rushed out and took the weapon from her. This was her way of showing
grief. The father then sat down, placed his baking board — a piece of bark —
before him, washed his hands, wiped them dry on his thighs, took flour and
water, mixed them, and baked a damper ; then he gave a piece to his son.
This was the family reconciliation.

Besides the bags netted from the hair cord, the women also make baskets
of grass and reeds. The baskets are so tightly and carefully woven that
they keep out water, and, like the bags, are very creditable examples of
manual skill. While the women are thus engaged the men are probably
sitting at the fire working up gum with which' to fasten their tools and
weapons, or kneading the pipeclay to streak their bodies with for the ' kara-
baries,' or native dances. The gum they use is chiefly that which comes
from the native grass-tree (xanthorrhced) . It is resinous, exudes from the
stem, and. hardens into bulbs which have to be softened at the fire, and
worked, like cobbler's wax, until it is soft enough for use. It is then applied
as a cement to bind, say, a stone axe to its haft, the joint being made secure
by lashings around it ; for this purpose the strong sinews of the kangaroo's
tail are used. Or, while the women and girls are busy with their netting or
other domestic duties, the men have the boys away with them in the bush,
and are training them to the right use of tools. They teach them to know
which woods are suitable for the fabrication of the various kinds of spears,
and 'bumarangs,' and clubs, and show how these should bo cut and scraped
and ornamented. If a piece of suitable spearwood has a twist on it, they
direct the boy to rub it well with grease, and put it again and again in the
fire for a little, and then bend it until it is quite straight.

And so on through the day the blacks are occupied with these employ-
ments and enjoyments, until night again comes on and calls them to the
evening meal and sleep. Considerable diversity, however, is sometimes
imported into their daily life by an occasional battle with enemies from
nnother tribe, or a set fight with a chosen party from a friendly tribule for
the settlement of a grievance, or the excitement which arises when one of
themselves has to stand out at the bidding of the tribal council and take his
punishment for some social offence, or by an elopement, a marriag'e, a wake,
and a burial.

62 THE ABOEIG-INES OP NEW SOUTH WALES.

y, . An epidemic may also spread from tribe to tribe, and cause mucb

iseases. gQjjj^jg^JQ^^ ^ friend says: — "When I arrived ia Dungog in
1840, I observed several oldish men deeply marked with traces of smallpox,
and, on questioning them, I found that when they were young a fearful
epidemic of this complaint had raged in the district and carried oJf great
numbers of the aboriginal population. I was informed that, when the
disease first appeared, they were camped at a place now called by the whites
' Black Camp 'Creek.' Here the disease was of a very virulent type, and,
after a week or so, they were unable to bury their dead, and day by day kepb
moving onwards, leaving their dead on the ground. Before this the district
was populous, but after itthe blacks never recovered their numerical strength."
This leads me to consider next the diseases of the blacks as apart of their
social system ; for there is no doubt that the foreign habits which they have
learned from civilisation have changed their personal and social condition,
and have materially contributed to their decay as a race. In their native
condition, the men and women are almost impervious to the weather ; for they
are independent of clothing and hardened against the changes of the atmos-
phere ; their natural food, such as I have described it, suits the physiological
constitution which they have inherited from a loi\g line of ancestors ; and
their free, wandering life has become part of their nature. But now, in all
the districts in Australia to which civilisation has come, they wear the cast-
off clothes of the white settlers, or the blankets which the Colonial G-overn-
ments distribute to them once a year. These often get soaked with rain ;
and yet the natives, knowing no better or having no change of clothing, or
caring not, still move about all day long with these wet garments on, and
throw them off only when they lie down to sleep with their feet to the camp-
fire. In the morning, the garments are still wet, but they are put on and
worn again just as they are. Hence comes the prevalence of pulmonary
disease which now makes such havoc among our blacks ; and this not because
of any neglect or injury on the part of the colonists, but just because their
contact with civilisation compels the indigenes to adopt habits which injure
them. And so also in respect of their food. The food which they get from us
is to them artificial, and does not suit their physical wants. Our sheep runs
and cattle stations have occupied their hunting ground, and they cannot
easily get their natural food, even if they were to seek for it. Elour, bread,
and salt beef or boiled mutton, and tea, are to them poor substitutes for
their ' bunya' and fungi, and grubs, and kangaroo, and opossum, and honey,
and fish. They feel that they have no home and no country ; for the white
man, they say, has taken all from them. And so from impoverishment of
blood and the susceptibility to disease which it brings, and from the aimless-
ness of their acquired modes of life, they droop and die, and will continue
to droop and die till they are all gone, despite the fostering care of our colonial
rulers. Happily, one fruitful source of decimation in the past has been
stopped by legislation. The blacks had learned to like the white man's
' fire-water,' and could buy it in the shops, if they had pence enough for a
glass. Olten have I been pained to see an old man who used to visit my
house put on his most persuasive countenance and whispered tones of voice,
while he begged me to give him "only one penny, massa, to buy tugar,"
when I well knew that as soon as he gathered three or four pennies he would
buy, not sugar, but its distilled product, rum. But the law now forbids
publicans, under heavy penalties, to sell intoxicating drinks to any native.

In their natural estate, their diseases are few in number, but generally
severe ; ft)r, want of shelter and the absence of proper vegetable and
farinaceous I'oud, give a sick man very littld chance of recovery. The ' vis

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 63

medioatrix naturcB ' is their best friend, when they are sick, hut they supple-
ment and assist it by simple remedies, such as drinks from native herbs,
the moist-earth cure, and bandages with moist clay for wounds ; and a black
man's wound heals very rapidly. For severe colds they use the earth-bath.
A deep hole is dug in some soft moist ground ; the patient stands in it, and
the earth or sand is filled in around him up to the neck ; there he remains-
groaning and sweating profusely for two or three hours, all the time receiving
only a few draughts of water. As might be expected, the bath either kills or
cures. But their most common diseases are catarrh, phthisis, pneumonia,
ophthalmia, rheumatism, dropsy, and concretionary lumps in the stomach from
the use of hard indigestible food. Variola has also in the past made fearful
ravages among them, as I have just shown. Contagious fevers and some other
diseases have been communicated by white men. As they use so little
vegetable food, boiling in water being impossible to them, and eat animal
food at the most roughly cooked by roasting, they are afflicted with hydatids
and inveterate skin diseases, which are aggravated by their habit of sleeping
with their dogs in their bosoms. Scabies is thus common ; the hair falls off
and leaves bald patches on their bodies. There is some reason to believe
that variola and syphilis existed among them before the coming of the whites,
but it is extremely difficult now to obtain satisfactory evidence to that eifect.
Even desperate wounds received in battle are seldom fatal unless they touch
a vital part ; protruding bowels have been replaced, the gash closed with gum,
and held together by a plaster of leaves, and soon the man was well again.
When a man is severely wounded in battle, he can feign death and lie as still
as a corpse until the enemy departs. All Australians show themselves quite
insensible to pain. They bear their wounds and tribal punishments, or a
surgical operation, without flinching. Thirst and hunger they endure with
indifference.

Eor some diseases, the ' karaji,' or native doctor, when he is called in, makes
passes with his hand over the body of the sick man, much in the same way as
a mesmerist will do. This, however, is done as exorcism to the pain and the
disease, not as a piece of therapeutics. In the Mota district of New Guinea,
the sorcerer does exactly the same thing, but he is paid for it, while our
Australian ' karaji ' is highly esteemed, but not paid.

As to negro diseases in Africa, Dr. Livingstone says: — "The most prevalent
diseases are pneumonia, produced by sudden changes of temperature, and
other inflammations, as of the bowels, stomach, and pleura, with rheumatism,
and diseases of the heart. Every year, the period preceding the rains is
marked by an epidemic. Sometimes it is general ophthalmia, resembling that
which prevails in Egypt ; at another time it is a kind of diarrhoea, which no
medicine will cure until there is a fall of rain, when anything acts as a
charm. Among the Makololo, fever is almost the only disease prevalent.
There is no consumption or scrofula, and but little insanity. Small-poXand
measles visited the country some thirty years ago, but they have not^ again
appeared. I have seen but one case of hydrocephalus, a few of epilepsy,
and none of cholera or cancer, while many diseases common in England are
quite unknown."

A merry people always love amusements, and if those that

Amuse- -^^^q gome to them from their fathers are not enough they

ments. invent others. In civilised countries, the persistence of

children's games is very noticeable, and in different countries certain sports

and pastimes have so established themselves among adults that these have

become characteristic and national. The only national sport which our

64 THE ABORIGINES OE NEW SOUTH WALES.

Australians have is the ' karabari' (q-v.). It is usually said that the
' karabari' is only a dance, but I am strongly of opinion that, like the ancient
dances in their origin, it has something of religion in it. A ' karabari' of
which I was a witness led me to think so. It was thus : — At a given place
the men assembled after nightfall, dressed in their gayest attire — ^their own
swarthy skins — with their face, body, and limbs fantastically decorated with
streaks of white and red. They set up a pole, about ten feet long, tipped
aloft with a bunch of heath or other green foliage. The men arranged them-
selves in a crescent form opposite the pole, but at some distance from it, at
intervals of a few feet from each other. The ' jins ' meanwhile placed them-
selves on the ground beyond the pole, but facing the performers, ready to
give an accompaniment of music with their voices and some sticks which
they held in their hands and struck together to the rhythm of the musie.
All being in their places, the dance begins ; the music strikes up ; the
blackfellows turn their bodies iirst to the right, then to the left, stretching
out their hands in unison ; talking and shouting all the while. Continually
repeating these regulated and uniform movements, they slowly advance
towards the pole, closing up as they advance ; at last they cluster thickly
round it, and simultaneously throw up their arms several times towards
its top, with loud cries. Thus ended that ' karabari.' In it the slow
and subdued movements, the gradual approach, and the uplifted hands and
voices at the end appeared to me to give the whole dance the character of
an act of worship and invocation.

It is also true that a merry people give permanence to their mirth in the form
of Songs. Our blackfellows have numerous songs, which are used at their
' karabaries,' but they frequently turn the ordinary incidents of their daily
life into song, and improvise on what they see going on around them. They
are keen satirists and excellent mimics, and in these self-made songs a white
man who may be present is sure to come in for a share of good-natured
comment, even although the ' improvisatore' be a friend. A gentleman (Mr.
McI.) who was well known for his kindness to the blacks on his estate was
invited to be their king by the local tribule, and he was looking on at what
may be called the ceremony of his investiture, which, as usual, took the
form of a ' karabari.' The blacks had made a figure of Mr. McL, crowning
it with a good imitation of the helmet hat which he usually wore. In their
songs, made for the occasion, they spoke freely of him and his peculiarities,
and told how the white man had come there and taken their country from
them. These are occasional songs prompted by the circumstances on hand ;
but the words of the proper ' karabari ' songs are often unintelligible to
those who use them ; and this confirms me in the belief that there is some-
thing religious about them. I know of one song which was composed by
some men of a tribe far off ; this song and the dance suitable to it were
passed from tribe to tribe by men detailed for the purpose, until, when it
reached my district, those who sang the words did not know what these
meant. And why should this persistence be maintained unless there be
8om(! sacredness in the thing? Here is the song of an old 'karaji' —
apparently an incantation song — which even his own daughters could
not translate for me: — («. 1) Burraijo, burraijo; {v.2)ojk nuara;
(i). 3) bindari, bindari; (i). 4) nunnalga, a ya nunnalga ; which verses
may be repeated ad libitum. The air to which the whole of this was sung
was very pleasant to the ear, and the old man, as he got near the end
of his singing, repeated the last words very fast, and then broke out into
a loud laugh. The next is a Kamalarai song of a very simple kind.
It is — Ngaia bula manga bundiira, bundara, bundara {da capo;

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 65

ad libitutn) ; which means, ' I two got kangaroos, kangaroos, kangaroos.'
Here are some Minyung songs : — (». 1) Windia bugga kulli? (u. 2)
ngaiabaia bugga; (w.3) kouwango kanggun kulli; (i).4) ngaiabaia
bugga ; which means, ' Where (is) the shield ? — I have the shield ; — Angry
they (are) over there; — I have the shield.' Another is: — (v.l) Waia
kaullga; («. 2) ling-gullumme naga; (j;.3) gommarabil naga; which
means, 'Up above go bowing; behold Lingullen ; behold the rainbow-coloured
one.' Each line of these two songs may be repeated any number of times.
Another Minyung song is: — {v. 1) Terriibilla, ngarrella, injegunga?
(«.2) paigal bummoUen, ngullengwengarri; which means, 'Singing,
dancing, when will it be ? — ^when the blacks are painted, we will (make)
karabari.' On the Hastings, an east-coast river, this is sung : — {v. 1) Milla,
milla, milla, millilia; (v. 2) goa galline, goa galline, ngaia
galline,hire ilan,u,u,u. This last line they sing with the hands on the
hips and a shake and a bow. Many of these songs are known everywhere, and
are recognised at once by blackf ellows from far distant tribes. When small-
pox was raging all over the land, a propitiatory song was composed in New
South Wales in honour of, or addressed to, the demon which had sent the
calamity. This was speedily known and used all over the colonies. It was
sung in a doleful way, and interspersed with the groans and cries of the
dying.

These songs are trivial, and are not likely to arouse our enthusiasm, but
they suit the tastes of a simple-minded people. The airs to which they
are sung are also simple, having very little variation from a monotone.
The only accompaniment to the voice is a drum and music-sticks. The
drum is a very simple affair. The women wrap up their opossum cloaks
into the shape of a hollow cylinder — some with shells inside to make a
jingling noise — and on this, as a drum, they tap with their lingers in concert.
The sticks are made of hard wood, in shape something like an office ruler,
but tapering to a point at the ends. Two of these are used. The one is
struck by the other. The sound is musical, and may be heard at a great
distance. These sticks, however, are used only in certain districts. Elsewhere
' bumarangs' are used instead.

At the Native Ball or ' karabari,' another adjunct is the painted skins of the
bands of performers and the ornaments they wear. Instead of the rouge
box and the puff powder as a preparation for the ball, every aboriginal
family has a supply of pipeclay and ruddle (red oxide of iron) . These,
if not to be had ia the district, are procured at the trading fairs and
otherwise by barter. The women delight in adorning their husbands
vnth these for the dance, and the men paint each other with stripes of
white on the ribs and chest and down the legs, and red and white on
the face and body, until, when they come forth and set themselves in
readiness to begin, they look like a band of ghostly skeletons. Their
chiefs have red streaks over and under the eyes and on their cheeks.
All, both men and women, put on a frontlet or head-band of native
material, and in it are stuck, just on the right side of the forehead, plumes
of swans' feathers. Necklaces of kangaroos' teeth or bits of reed and
armlets are worn ; and, hanging down behind from the belt, is something
that looks like a cock's tail. In the nose is the usual nose-stick ; tied to the
ankles are bunches of foliage which, in the dance, make a curious rustling noise,
reminding one of the jingle made by the ankle ornaments of some Noi-th
American Indian tribes in their dances. A big fire is kept burning while
the dance is going on, and the fitful glare of the light on the naked and
ghastly bodies of the performers, the silence of the forests in the darkness

66 THE ABORIGIJSTES 0¥ NEW SOUTH AVALES.

all around, the bare trunks of the huge gum-trees — all combine to make a
weirdly scene to the beholder. The ' karabari' dances are kept up till the
dawn of day, and it is amazing to see the vigour and the energy which even
the old men display in twisting their bodies and stamping and turning to
one side and the other, every movement being made by all in unison, and
as mechanically as if all were but the united portions of one machine. In
an aU-night-long ' karabari' there are acts and interludes. The acts may be
of various kinds, representations of the stalking and capture of an emu, the
hunting of kangaroos, and other sylvan sports, or a fight with white
men, in which, of course, the blacks are victorious, much to the delight
of the spectators. The interludes consist of the merry-making of two or
three clowns, who are painted and dressed up in a peculiar way for the
occasion.

It vpill be observed that the women do not share in the dance ; for, of
general dancing in which both the sexes join, or even of dancing such as
ours is, the aboriginal Australians know nothing.

The Manly Amusements are spear-throwing, wrestling, and football. The
first of these is indigenous, but I am not sure that the others are so. As a
mark for the spears some object is set up at a distance, and the competitors
vie with each other in trying to hit the mark, as in our rifle competitions.
So in wrestling ; one man steps out and gives a challenge ; another offers
himself ; the rivals rub their hands and their bodies with ashes to assist the
holding ; he who throws his opponent three times is the victor, and stands
aside to be pitted next against some other victor, until one man emerges, amidst
the shouts of the by-standers, as undisputed champion. No tripping or unfair
dealing is allowed in these contests. In football, sides are taken — one
'totem' class of young men perhaps against another, but there are no goals
and no bounds. Each side tries as much as possible to keep the ball to itself
and kicks it in any direction. The ball is made of opossum skin, is about the
size of an orange, and is stuffed hard with charcoal. Besides these out-door
amusements, the men have others to keep them lively on wet days in camp
and at night round the camp fire. Then they tell stories, and make riddles,
and otherwise entertain each other, as I have already described. The
children too have their games — ' hide and seek,' string puzzles like ' cat's
cradle' for boys and girls. But the boys have games of their own ; while
still very young, they handle a small toy spear, and throw it either at a
stationary mark or at. a round piece of bark which is made to roll along
some yards in front of them. Then, they have also toy 'bumarangs,' and a
stick which makes ' ducks and drakes' on dry land. This stick is about
two feet long, with a spike knob at one end, and tapered off very thin
towards the other end as a handle. This stick is swung backwards and
forwards by the handle, and then pitched off", much in the same way as in
our ' throwing the hammer.' Jt has been known to go 220 yards.

In their sports and amusements, the Melanesians of Eiji resemble the
Australians. They have dances with rhythmical and regular movements
like those of troops on review ; the performers are gaily dressed after their
fashion ; they carry clubs and spears in the dance ; they march and halt
and march again ; a buffoon sometimes comes in and raises a laugh by his
grotesque drolleries. Besides these they have ' blindman's buff,' ' hide
and seek,' ' ducks and drakes,' ' hop, step, and jump,' stone-skittles, and
the like. All these sports seem to be indigenous there. Like our black-
fellows, they are also fond of hearing and telling native traditions and
extravagant fictions.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC. 67

The African negroes, too, have great delight in lying near the fire at
night and telling stories.

y, 7 I have already spoken of pipe-clay and ruddle as articles of
trade ; the Mindi-mindi gatherings are the markets at which this
trade is carried on. The necessity for these fairs is not far to seek. A
Mack man's own ' taurai-' does not furnish everything he requires for his
daily life. In it there may be food enough, but he wants suitable stone for
an axe, wood for his spears and ' bumarangs' and shields and clubs, flint
for cutting and skinning, gum to be used as cement, and lumps of gritty
sand-stone, on which to sharpen his stone-axe ; for adornment, the pipe-
clay and the red-ochre are much valued, and so are swan-down feathers
and the rose-coloured crests of a certain kind of cockatoo ; some of these he
can supply, and for them he gets in barter others that he wants. Then also
there are manufactured articles which he can give in exchange, — ^tloaks, rugs,
baskets, knitted bags, nets, weapons, and tools ; most of these articles bear
the ' brand' of the maker. In this way the black man's wants are supplied
by the mutual interchange of commodities. I suppose that, at these fairs,
the usual amount of haggling goes on in the making of bargains, but there
is no quarrelling ; for, during the time, universal brotherhood prevails. The
fairs are held whenever there is a need for them.

In the Andaman Islands, large gatherings of a similar kind are held by
neighbouring tribes from time to time for barter and trading.

o- , All official communication between the tribes is carried on by

^gnals. ^^^^ public messengers or heralds, as already described. But

?*?^*' there is also the use of message-sticks as a means of communica-

sticles. ^^^^ between individuals at a distance. A piece of thick bark is

h-esture- ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ oblong shape, perhaps measuring 9 inches by 3 or 4 ;

language, ^j^^ ggnder makes a number of notches on the edges of it and

dimples or holes on the surface of it, and sends the stick to his correspondent,

who is said to understand what is wanted. The sticks are often round

like a ruler 'or rolling-pin. But there must be a good deal of guessing in

the matter ; for the marks are certainly not pictorial writing, and even the

blacks themselves are not quite sure of the meaning, unless there is a

messenger along with the stick.

More intelligible, however, are the smoke signals, by which news is con-
veyed to a distant portion of the tribe in a few minutes. A fire is kindled ;
bunches of leaves and branches are thrown on ; these soon make a fierce
blaze; then heaps of grass and reeds are put on the flame; these so
effectually smother it that the smoke escapes only through an opening on
the top of the pile. This also is covered up for a few minutes, and a
draught-hole is made down below, near the ground ; the vent is now opened,
and a dense black volume of smoke rushes out. The black man now proceeds
to raise what he calls " one big fellow smoke." This process, although it
appears easy, requires considerable dexterity ; it is effected by waving a long
leafy branch in a circle just above the vent ; the motion being horizontal, a
slight twist of the hand gives to the ascending mass a spiral form, which it
maintains to a great height. Thus the natives inform their friends at a dis-
tance that the message which has been sent in the morning, in this instance
by three smoke fires, may have been received. Between those who thus
telegraph to each other, there is a previous understanding as to the meaning
of each signal ; two smokes together may be taken to mean peace, and three
for war. A tribule twenty miles to the north may wish to know if the white

68 THE ABORIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

men between them and their next neighbours to the south are f riendlj and
so make this inquiry by means of one smoke ; to give a reply, a hollow dead
tree is selected, with three pipe-holes near its top ; a fire is kindled within
the trunk, and the smoke escapes by these pipes ; if only two columns of smoke
are w^anted, one of these holes may be plugged up.

Other simple modes of conveying tidings are used, which the ready intelli-
gence of the black man enables him to understand at once. A friend of mine
says : — " Many years ago, when I was out shooting, I went past a camp where
I knew the blacks were the evening before, but they were all gone. I saw
one of the black men approaching and I asked him where his comrades were.
He said he did not know as he had been away up the river for several days.
However, on going into the deserted camp, he called me and showed me
there a stick stuck in the ground with a cob of corn tied at the top of it and
pointing to the north-east. This meant, he said, that they had gone to a
settler's place in that direction to pull com."

Gesture language is another means of communication between our tribes.
It is not used by contiguous tribes ; for there are always individuals in such
tribes who can speak or understand the mutual dialects. But if a man of
the Sydney tribe wandered far into the interior of the continent, say to
Cooper's Creek, his language would have been of no avail to him there ; so
also, if a black from Port Darwin, in the far north, came to the same locality.
Hence the natives iu the interior have a very full and elaborate system of
gesture language, while our tribes on the eastern coast have nothing of the
kind. By certain movements of the hand, turning it in various ways and
placing in various positions in relation to the body, the tribes near Cooper's
Creek can speak with any strangers who come among them.

„ , 7 It seems to me odd that I should have to write the Celtic word
' cromlech ' to describe anything that our blackfellows have
reared ; and yet there is sufBcient evidence to show that the piles and
circles of stones found ia different places in Aiistralia are not all of them
natural ; some of them seem to be monumental or religious, others for
shelter. I know of three huge pillar stones or rocks which stand in an
elevated position on a mountain range ; the blacks say that, when they see
these stones in a time of drought and wish firmly for one, two, or three days
rain, the rain will certainly come. An Irishman, whom I was talking with
one day, told me that in a very dry year he was obliged to leave his farm and
go off to the diggings ; he and two others were climbing a very steep part
of that range under the guidance of a blackfellow and came in sight of the
three megaliths ; the black told the story about them, and the Irishman did
wish hard for rain ; in an hour or two the aspect of the sky so changed that
he turned back, leaving his companions ; and, sure enough, the rain came,
and it rained the number of days he had wished for !

On the plains of Yictoria there were stone circles from 10 to 100 feet
in diameter, and within some of these there was an inner circle. Similar
stone circles have been seen at Cooper's Creek. In another place in the
interior, Giles, the explorer, found mounds of stones at even distances apart
with a large rock in the centre of each ; the ground around was stony, but
paths had been cleared between these heaps. Sir George Grey also found
such heaps in north-western Australia ; one of them was 22 feet long, 14 feet
broad, and 4 feet high. They were placed due east and west and had been
built by the hand of man. . He thinks that they were tombs.

WEAPONS, TOOLS, TJTENSILS. 69

V- 7 A supply of water is one of the necessaries of life, and in such

. . , a country as Australia, where severe droughts may occur,
water is often a precious commodity. The natives are very
acute in finding supplies of water. There is a certain fibrous root which they
tear up even in the desert, and from it get a pint or two of water. In a dry
water-course they dig a hole in a likely place and find water. But Eyre, the
explorer, on the route from Adelaide to King G-eorge's Sound, found wells
" sunk through loose sand 14 or 15 feet deep, and 2 feet in diameter, quite
circular, carried down straight, and the work beautifully executed." Sir
George Grey saw similar wells in north-western Australia. In his travels,
Eorrest saw in rocks sundry cavities, small and large, for the reception of
rain water. These may have been natural, but enlarged by the natives.

^ , _P There is only one thing more which I have to mention under
^ -^ this section ; it is the order of a native camp where various
^' tribules are assembled. This is arranged on so simple a
principle that there is no difiiculty in finding any family, even when there
are hundreds of blacks assembled together. I shall take a portion of the
state of Illinois as an illustration. Let us suppose that the place of meeting
is where Springfield now stands ; the Springfield blacks erect their huts
there, and other blacks come in from north, east, south, and west. At what-
ever time they may arrive, the blacks from Williamsville will encamp im-
mediately to the north of their Springfield friends, and those from Lincoln
behind the others; on the east, those from Decatur will be nearest, and
from Tolono behind them ; and so on for Auburn and Carlinville on the south,
and for Jacksonville and Illinoistown on the west ; and in that order they
remain while the encampment lasts.

VI I. -WEAPONS, TOOLS, UTENSILS.

-TTT The fighting weapons of the Australians are few in number

, -v,, ■ and simple in construction ; they are spears, clubs, shields, and
y. ' * the ' bumarang.' Of the last there are two kinds, but it is
Humarang. ^^^ ^j^^ ^^^ ^^ these that is used in fights ; of the other
weapons there are various kinds and sizes. In speaking of all weapons
and tools I shall refer to them by the native names which they bear in New
South "Wales, and mostly in the Sydney dialect. It is necessary that
those persons who write on Australian subjects should come to some mutual
arrangement in this matter, for already much perplexity has arisen in the
minds of foreigners from our want of agreement on this point. The same
ceremonies and the same weapons are described by authors in the different
colonies, and so many different names for them are used that the reader is
left in doubt. The Sydney names ' bora,' ' bumarang,' ' karabari,' are
already established, and I see no valid reason why other Sydney words and
names should not be accepted as they are found in most of the older books,
and thus have the precedence. I have said that there ape two ' bumaraugs ;'
the other of these is commonly called the ' come-haok boomerang,' from the
strange peculiarity of its flight ; but while that name may be descriptive
enough, yet it is not convenient to handle, and in one view the name is in
itself contradictory, and therefore absurd, for it really means the ' play-
fighting ' weapon. The name ' bumarang ' has always hitherto been written
'boomerang ; but, considered etymologically, that is wrong, for the root of it
it buma 'strike, fight, kill,' and -ara, -arai, -ari, -arang are, all
of them, common formative terminations in this dialect. Therefore, I have

70 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

always written the name as ' bumarang,' and the ' bumarang' is the fighting
variety, and to this use I will restrict that word. The ' come-bacJi' variety
is not a fighting weapon. A dialect name for it is ' bargan,' which word
may" be explained in our language to mean ' bent like a sicl?le or crescent
moon.' I will, therefore, say 'bargan' when I mean that variety. It is
important that two diiferent words should be used ; for much confusion has
been produced in the past by both varieties being called ' bumarang.' And
on this distinction depends the relevancy of the arguments for the identifi-
cation of our ' bumarang' with similar instruments in other lands ; for some-
thing like it is found on the Dravidian coast of India, in the tombs and on
the monuments of Egypt, and in some parts of the United States. In
Arizona and New Mexico, for instance, such a weapon is used for hitting
rabbits and small game ; its form varies from that of a cavalry sabre to an
obtuse angle of 130 degrees ; it is thrown forward horizontally; the material is
oak or ash, and the dimensions are about 20 inches long, 2 inches broad, and f
inch thick ; it is thin at the edge. On some of the Egyptian frescoes there
is seen a man in a boat, with a bent stick in his hand, and in the act of throw-
ing it at some birds above him. Such sticks are not ' bumarangs,' for they com-
monly have a double curve, somewhat resembling an elongated capital S.
But from a tomb at Thebes three instruments were got which are all true flat
' bumarangs,' not curved sticks. One of these is in the British Museum.
Greneral Pitt Bivers has stated that, some years ago, he had a fac simile made
of this one, and found that, by throwing it against the wind, it came back to
his feet several times running. He thinks that the returning weapon — that
is, the ' bargan' — is only the other one modified in form, and adds that " the
racial connection between the Australians and the Egyptians, startling as it
at first appears, becomes the less improbable the more we look at in the light
of comparative culture." The link between Egypt and Australia is the
Dravidian races of theDekkan of India. Some years ago, three 'bumarangs'
from Kattyawar, Bombay, were presented to the Museum of the Anthro-
pological Society, London.

As the Australian weapon is so thin, it gets its tenacity and strength from
the toughness of the wood of which it is made. Here the wood chosen is
that of the fig-tree or willow ; elsewhere ' ironbark' and ' she-oak' are used, or
even the bark of a ' gum-tree.' No two ' bargans' are exactly alike in cut and
shape. The maker has to chip and smooth the piece of wood as he goes on
with his work. He tries it now and again, and makes alterations until its
action is perfect. Unlike the ' bumarang,' there is not much utility in it,
although with it a black man does kill birds and small animals, and some-
times throws it in battle. In shape it is a good deal like a reaping sickle
without a handle, with a slight twist in contrary directions at each end. To
throw it, our native takes hold of it by the one end, and keeps it horizontally
in his hand. He notes the direction from which the wind is blowing, and
turns to face it. He now poises the weapon, looks at it carefully, and gives
the end a twist if he thinks it is at all out of shape. He pauses for a few
seconds and considers the force with which he ought to throw it as against
the wind. Suddenly it leaves his hand and moves onward 50 or 100 yards iu
a straight lines ; then suddenly it rises in the air with a curious gyrating
motion to a great height, and returns, with a most fantastic irregularity in
its flight, and at last lodges itself on or in the ground at the thrower's feet.
A European, standing beside him, would run off to escape the danger as it
approaches, but that is the very way to put one's self in reach of a serious
wound ; for the instrument is sure to land near the very spot where the
thrower wishes it to stop, even although that spot is behind him. On one

"WEAPONS, TOOLS, UTENSILS. 71

oceasion a colonist described on tte ground a circle about 5 feet in diameter,
and offered to give a blackfellow sixpence for every time he could land bis
'bargan' witbin that circle. He succeeded seven times out of twelve throws.

The average weight of a ' bargan' is from 6 to 10 ounces, and average
dimensions are 20 inches from point to point, 2 inches broad, and i an inch
thick. It is flat on one side and slightly rounded on the other ; the back is
round but the inner curve is worked to an edge. In all these respects, how-
ever, there is considerable diversity ; the ' bargans' in Western Australia,
for instance, weigh only 4 ounces.

The ' bumarang' proper is a larger and heavier weapon than the ' bargan.'
In shape it has a more open curve than the other, increasing its length to 30
inches, while the breadth and thickness are nearly the same as before, but
the weight is 10 ounces. It somewhat resembles a scimitar, and its inner
edge is sharp and dangerous in battle. Thrown from a distance of 150 yards,
it will break a limb, or pierce through the body of a man with its point.

An instrument resembling the ' bumarang,' but intended rather to be a
sword than a missile, wfis once in use among the natives on the River Murray.
It had the same curve as the ' bumarang,' but it was 3 feet long ; at one
end it was shaped like the butt of a gun-stock, and the width varied from
8J inches in one part to 2^ inches in another ; both edges were sharp.

It is rather remarkable that the ' bargan' was not known to the Tasmanians,
nor, apparently, the ' bumarang,' for it is said that their only weapons were
spears and clubs ; no shields even ; nor did they put jagged pieces of quartz
or bone on the end of their spears. Does this mean that the blacks of Tasmania
retained an earlier and more primitive style of weapon than the Australians,
and that, in consequence of their isolation in that island, a subsequent wave
of immigration or of social advancement in Australia did not reach them ?
On so obscure a subject it is hazardous to offer even a conjecture ; but my
own opinion has been that the now extinct Tasmanians represented the very
earliest population of Australians, and that these first immigrants, like the
Celts in Europe, were driven back and back by fresh waves of population
from Asia, till, at last, they found their final and only safe resting-place in
Tasman's Island. The facts seem to lend themselves to this explanation,
which is also supported by this circumstance, that some of the tribes on the
mainland do not use the ' bumarang,' nor is it known in New Gruinea.

„ „ Clubs and spears can claim great antiquity as lethal weapons.

^P^"^^- ] t may have been a piece of wood used as a club that first brought
■deathinto the world, and both clubs and spears figure in the earliest representa-
tions we have of men engaged in war or the chase. Language, which is
often a faithful custodian of the primitive ideas about things and their uses,
tells us what a spear was in its origin ; it was either a thing to be ' thrown,'
'a lance' (Er. lancer), or it was ' a twig,' ' a branch,' hence a rod, a sceptre,
a spear. Nothing can be simpler than this. When primitive man first
came to feel the necessity of defending himself against wild beasts, the
weapon readiest to his hand must have been the small branch of a tree,
sharp enough at one end to pierce the body of the foe, and blunt and heavy
enough at the other to knock him down ; or, if the enemy had not yet
come to close quarters, a stout twig which could be hurled against him so
as to pierce or disable him. Then, when the efi'ectiveness of these rough
and ready instruments had been proved, they were kept in store for
use. Hence the birth of clubs and spears. Then comes the fabrication
of these weapons by the help of fire and flint, ere yet the working of
metais had appeared. As contrasted with the animal creation, man is

72 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

a tool and instrumeat maker, and the inventiveness of primitive men
was certainly stimulated by the instinct of self-preservation. So, I
imagine, I see a baud of them sitting day by day in some quiet valley
of the ranges of the Niphates mountains, burning, cutting, scraping, and
shaping the wood of the hardest trees into weapons of defence ; or selecting
the straightest and strongest reed from the water-courses, and fixing in the
ends of them a short piercer of hardwood. The same weapons, or many of
them, also ministered to the daily life of man ; for with them he could kill
for food both fish and fowl and beast.

Now, it is in this early stage of existence we find our Australian black-
fellows still. They are content with these simple weapons, and have never
attained to the use of metals. Their spears are either of reed or of wood,
and the wood-spear may be plain in its whole length, or with jagged barbs
worked in the natural wood at the point, or with stone jags fixed in the wood
there, or with one, two, or three barbs or prongs cemented and lashed on ; or
it may be furnished with a sharp point and head of stone. Of all these, the
reed spear is the easiest to make. A suitable reed is found at the lagoon or
river, or the lower part of the flowering stalk of the grass-tree is taken.
Neither of these requires any dressing. The thicker end is merely rounded
for the hand, and on to the other end is placed a long lancet of some hard-
wood, which has been carefully scraped into shape and smoothed. The
joining is secured with the usual gum cement, and wrapped round with
native cord. The whole is about 6 feet long. This is a fish-spear, but, like
other fish-spears, it is a dangerous stabbing weapon. Another fish-spear,
9 or 10 feet long, is wholly of wood, and is made to taper to a fine point like
the other. Another is a long taper point as before, but fitted into a stout
handle piece. Still another kind of fish-spear has the shaft wholly of wood,
but at the point is fixed a head and barb of sharp bone. Otber fish-spears
are from 10 to 15 feet long, and are furnished with long prongs, lashed on
in the usual way.

There is a similar variety in the wooden war-spears, but most of them are
barbed on one side or on both. They are from 8 feet to 11 feet long. A
tough piece of wood is taken for the purpose, but many days must our black
man labour till his spear is fit for use. Portunately, he does not consider
time a valuable commodity, and so he works on, taking pleasure in hig work ;
for is not the spear his own, and for his own use ? and will not his comrades
envy or praise him, if his made spear is fine in quality or workmanship and
effective in use ? But the tedious labour begins when he proceeds to shape
the jags on the end of it. There may be as many as a dozen of these all on
one side, or half a dozen on each side of a double-barbed spear ; each of these
jags must be so made that they will not easily break off when the spear is in
use. To avoid this labour, and also to use up a straight piece of material,
the spear-maker cuts a groove in one or both sides of the point of his plain
wood, and in these grooves he fixes sharp chips of hard stone, which are as
eificacious as barbs. Erom the northern territory of Australia come some
beautiful spears, with heads and points of basalt and quartzite, eight or
nine inches long. These heads have been formed by careful chipping, and
anyone who sees such a spear can estimate the care and patience which
the workman must use who wishes to make a successful spear-head.

Besides the ' come-back bumarang,' another curiosity of Australian inven-
tion is the throw-stick, with which many of the war-spears are impelled from
the hand of the owner. This is already known by the name of ' womara,' and
I think that the use of any other name for it only causes confusion. It is

WEAPONS, TOOLS, UTENSILS. 73

a very ingenious instrument, and universally the same tlirouglxout the
Australian continent. If the blacks invented it after their coming hither,
that alone would prove that the ancestors of the race were not the despicable
baboons that some ethnologists would have them to be. In this connection,
we should remember that the beginnings of civilisation rose from the race
of Ham ; to them we owe the first rudiments of the science of astronomy,
the art of building, the skiU to work in metals, and the invention of pictorial
writing, and probably of the alphabet ; and, if the present representatives of
the Hamites do not now uphold the early promise of the founders of their
race, it is not wise to denounce them as the lowest of barbarians, as is too
often done ; for there may have been conditions in their ancient history
which have dragged them down from their first estate, and have kept them
down, their environment being unfavourable to recovery. One of these
depressing influences we shall have a glimpse of in the next section.

The ' womara' is an instrument of wood, from 24 to 30 inches long, and a
little thicker than a spear. Unlike the spear, it is not thrown at the enemy
in battle, but remains always in the black man's hand or in his possession,
reserved for use when it is required ; and so he ornaments it profusely, back
and front, in the highest style of native art. In its general outlines, the
' womara' is not unlike an ice-skate, or a Chinese pointed shoe, with a round
sole on it ; only the ' womara' is very elongated, much narrower, has no heel,
and is not shaped like the foot. The point of it is turned up, exactly like
the point of a lady's crochet needle ; in fact, if you were to take a crochet
needle and magnify it sufficiently, flattening down the upper surface where
the hook is, you would have a very good example of a 'womara.' Not all spears
are used with the' womara,' but spears that are to be so used have a dimpled
hole worked in their butt end, which hole receives the point of the hook-end
of the ' throw-stick.' The thrower holds the ' womara' horizontally in his
hand, about the level of the ear, and thus at a convenient height for throw-
ing ; the stout end of it passes between his first and second fingers, and is
kept steady by the two other fingers being closed down upon it ; the spear,
fitted into the point of the hook at its end, rests on the knuckles of these
two fingers, and passes back between the thumb and the outer side of the
forefinger; the pressure of the thumb keeping it steady. When he is ready
to throw, the native gives the spear an onward impulse ; a sudden jerk dis-
charges the spear with great force, and leaves the ' womara ' still in his hand
to be used again if necessary. It is said that experiments made at the
bidding of the great Napoleon, proved that the ' womara' gave an additional
projectile force of about 50 yards. It is certain that our blacks find it is
useful, and like it, for it is in very general use. There was no ' womara' in
Tasmania.
„ „, , Clubs are certainly as old as spears, perhaps a little older. The
club in such a hand as that of Hercules is a terrible weapon
of attack, and the symbolical baton and mace of modern days are an
evidence that personal prowess with the club was a sure passport to
authority and power. The first clubs must have been only big roots or
broken limbs of trees. One of the simplest of Australian clubs, the 'nulla-
nulla,' resembles the root of a grass-tree in the shape of its head, and may
have been in its origin only this root scraped and dressed down to handy
dimensions. Then, when the efifectiveness of the instrument had been proved
by using it, others would be made of harder and heavier timber, but still in
the same shape ; such is the force of habit. The ' nulla-nulla' is in shape
something like a child's wicker-rattle, and has a sharp rim running round
the middle of the knob on the end. In consequence of its size and weight,

74 THE ABOEIG-INES OP NEW SOFTH WALES.

the knob of the ' nulla' might be broken off by a heavy blow ; hence arises
the ' bundai' — also a war club — which has knob end nicely tapered off to a
stout round. The timber used in New South Wales for both the 'nulla' and
the ' bundai' is either ' myall' or ' myrtle' wood — hard and compact in the
grain. Unlike either of these is the ' kotara.' It is more used for thrusting
and stabbing, and the blade has a double edge something like a double lancet
or an artist's steel scraper. The blade is about one-third of the whole
length of the instrument ; it is thick at the mid-rib, and from it tapers on
both sides to the edges and the point. Another club is the ' kotumba.' For
its shape it owes less to the hand of man than the others; for it is only a
stout shaft with a natural club-foot on the end of it, but set on the shaft at
an obtuse angle. It is somewhat like a ' hockey'-stick, or a ' putter' in golf,
only that the handle is stouter and the arm is longer.

The ' nulla' and the ' bundai' may be made with bosses on them, either cut
from the natural wood or fixed on the head. A general name for all Austra-
lian clubs is ' waddy,' and, although they are really clubs, they are often used
as missiles in battle. Spears are never poisoned. Besides all these, there is
the yam-stick, the weapon of the women, and so called because it is used
by them in digging up tlae edible roots which go by the general name of
' yams.' It is quite straight in its whole length, of tough wood, and sharp
at the point and edged near the end. The women wield it freely as a baton
in their own scrimmages, and a girl, when she is coming to be of age, is
presented with one by her mother to keep off importunate lovers. A variety
of it, perhaps about 3 feet long, is used by the men also in hand-to-hand
fights, and with its keen point they can give each other desperate stabs.

In Queensland, and other parts of Australia, the natives have a wooden
sword about 3 feet long, with short and stout handle. The blade is either
straight or slightly curved. The weight is from 3 to 10 lb. It is a dangerous
weapon.

Another offensive weapon is the arrow. Now the Australians have no
bows-and-arrows, and this fact has sometimes been urged against them as a
proof of their want of invention, and so of their degraded condition. But
the same thing can be said of some of the eastern Polynesians, for in some
of their islands bows-and-arrows are used only as children's toys, and in some
of the Melanesian islands — New Ireland, for instance — there are no bows-
and-arrows. It cannot be the absence of suitable wood that has prevented
the Australians from having the bow ; for our native ' myrtle " is a tough and
straight-grained wood, and quite suitable, while many native reeds wouW
make admirable arrows. If they ever had the bow-and-arrow they huva
laid them aside, because of their unhandiness. A native, when he is
wandering about, does not like to have his hands encumbered by any weapons
which he cannot use on a sudden ; for an enemy may rush upon him
unawares, or an animal of the chase may be startled from its lair ; then the
two or three spears which he carries with him are far more readily used than
a bow could be ; and the dexterity which he has in using the spear makes
the bow to him a very inferior instrument indeed. Let any one just see an
Australian use the spear and the ' womara ' in shooting at a mark, and he
will at once understand how the bow has lost place, if it ever existed here.

There is only one other thing to be said about the spear. The toea
of the natives are prehensile ; I have seen a man lift a straw from the
ground with his toes and raise it to his hand. And so also he can catch the
end of a light spear with his toes and drag it along with him through the

WEAPONS, TOOLS, UTENSILS.

grass, as he walks. This fact is urged against him as a proof that he is
treacherous. Those who make that charge are not aware of the acuteness
of vision which a black man possesses. If a native and a colonist are riding
together over a level plain and some on6 is approaching in the opposite
direction, the native will see the the stranger probably 15 minutes before he
becomes visible to the white man. What hope then is there that a native
can take another native at a disadvantage by dragging a spear 'i\ith his toes ?
His very manner of walking would at once expose the subterfuge. Instead
of thi« faculty being the outcome of treachery, I believe that it has been
acquired in the chase. When stalking a kangaroo or an emu, the man's
hands are filled with his shield which he uses as a screen and the leafy
boughs which he carries as a counterfeit bush, and if he is able to have also
one spear in his hand, it is certainly desirable that he should have another
in reserve, if the first one should fail ; or at least, a small spear in addition,
to give the coup de grace, when the game is disabled by a first wound.

CT, . , , For every cut there is a parry in fencing ; and so, wherever

there are spears to be thrown, shields will be made and used
in defence. Australian shields arrange themselves in two main divisions —
(1) those that are used in peace when a man has to stand out at the bidding
of the elders and take his punishment for some tribal offence ; or when he
has to fight out a quarrel in single contest. As his adversary lays on with a
' nulla ' or a ' bundai,' the defendant needs a strong, heavy shield to bear
the weighty blows. The other kind is much lighter, and is better fitted for
defence in battle. The heavy shields are all cut with the greatest care
out of the solid, very hard and close-grained wood being selected, chiefly
' ironbark' ; but ' box ' and ' gum ' are also used. The length of the shields
is from 30 to 40 inches ; breadth, from 3 to 5 inches ; and average thickness,
about 5 inches. They are ail tortoise-backed in shape, and like the half of
a long pointed spindle cut longitudinally ; some of them have a slight ridge
all along the middle of the back. The inner side bulges enough in the
centre to admit of an oblong hole being made through it to receive the
hand. The weight of a shield is about 3 lb.

The round back of the shield is always ornamented all over with carving,
mostly of straight and zigzag lines. But the variety of the devices shows
the resources of the blackman's art, and the execution is so elaborate that
many weeks must be spent on the carvings of a single shield.

The lighter shields would not stand a blow from a ' nulla-nulla,' but are
quite strong enough to intercept spears in battle ; and in order to protect the
bearer's body in battle they are much wider than the others, sometimes
reaching 10 inches in width, while the thickness is usually about half an inch.
Indeed, these are so puffed out on the sides as to be like a sole or other
flat fish. The common material is the bark of a tree. This must be cut
off carefully, and, if possible, with a portion of the wood of the tree
attached. It is laid on a rounded mound of hot ashes, and covered with
stones and earth and turf. It is thus moulded into shape by heat. A shield
of this kind weighs about \\ or 2 lb.

The native shields of Western Australia differ somewhat from those just
described. They are obtuse at both ends, and in their outer surface they
resemble a flat spectacle case. There is only one kind, and the ornamentation
of them is uniform, consisting of a set pattern of grooves, filled in with red.
On the inner side the part for the hand is cut out of the solid.

76 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

Imnle '^^^ earliest of implements is the stone axe, and the use of it must
^ , be as old as the human race. It was used everywhere in this

■ land, when the white man first came here, but it is seldom seen

o. , now in the settled districts. Ancestral implements even, like the
indigene himself, must disappear when civilisation comes in.
The savage ceases to care for the rude implements of his race when he sees
the work which steel can do. But the stone axe has done a good work for him
in the days that are past, when time and labour were commodities of little
value. With the aid of fire and that chipping instrument in his hand, the
savage was able to fell a tree, dress its trunk, and hollow it into a canoe, and
then boldly face the ocean, or paddle about on an inland lake ; and that was
no mean achievement. But the Australians, even those living on the coast,
have not been much given to the framing of canoes. Their canoes have been
literally barks, formed from the bark of trees, and fitted only for crossing
rivers and lakes. Yet the stone axe has been to him a much valued
weapon.

As may be expected, the material used in making a stone axe was always
of the hardest description — basalt, diorite, granite, greenstone — and wherever
suitable rock did not exist in the ' taurai ' of any tribe, the rough material
was got from other tribes by barter ; or by purchase or favour, a deputation
of workers from the one tribe was allowed the privilege of taking what they
wanted from the quarries in the territory of another tribe. The material
being thus obtained, then commenced the labour of shaping the piece selected
for use as a hatchet. This was accomplished by striking it repeated blows
with another hard stone. In this operation, the Australians must have been
very dexterous ; for the spear heads known to have been made by certain
tribes are marvels of manual skill. Many tribes used the axes in their rough
state, that is, unpolished, because they had no access to sandstone rocks on
which to grind and sharpen them. Other tribes, again, had them polished
and so sharp as to cut through a branch with two or three blows. The
possession of a sandstone rub ground was thus much valued. There is one
notable place of that kind in the Kamalarai territory which must have been
used by the tribes around for many generations. It is an extensive deposit
of sandstone of a gritty nature,fit for the making of grindstones. The rock,
rises out of a deep reach of the river, and slopes backwards for about 30 feet,
and then terminates in a flat top, much of which is now covered with grass.
Tet over at least 2 acres of this top there may be seen innumerable hollows,
made in the stone by the blacks when sharpening their axes ; for as soon as
one groove became too deep the worker would begin another beside it. Not
only on the top, but also on the sloping side of the rock, these marks are
seen down to the water's edge, and below it, as far as the eye can reach. In
1841 there was a great drought in these parts, so severe that the large timber
on the black ridges round about and elsewhere all died over an extent of 10
or 12 miles. At that time the water in the river at the rubbing-place was
very low, and yet the rub-marks could still be seen far below the surface of
the water. How many generations of Kamalarai blacks had encamped there
we cannot tell, but the rocks still testify why they came there, and how
laboriously they toiled.

Among our Australian tribes, then, the stone axe is found both in the
rough and the polished stage, and is used both without a handle fixed to it
and with one. When there is no handle, the black man grasps the instru-
ment in the hollow of his hand, and continues chipping until his work his
done. When a handle is required, a suitable piece of wood is taken, and

WEAPONS, TOOLS, UTENSILS. 77

split so as to receive the head of the axe, which may he notched at that part
to make it hold better ; the head is fixed there with native gum, and the
wood is then securely bound together behind the head with cord or strong
woody fibre ; or a flexible bough of a young tree is taken ; the part that is
to receive the head is placed for a time in hot ashes ; it is then taken out
and bent round the head, and secured as before with gum and cord. The
axes are usually 5 or G inches in length, 3 or 4 inches broad, and weigh
from 1 to 6 lb. ; the heavier ones were used for rough work. The cutting
edge has always the broad curve, which is so effective in the American wood-
man's axe. Smaller axes have the shape of the drop of a lady's ear-ring.

„7 • 1 Useful modifications of the axe are the chisel and the adze.
J J ■ Both of them are merely the stone-axe knives, with a haft fixed
on in such a way as to enable the worker either to push or to
etrike with the cutting edge, according to the nature of the work on which
he is engaged. But some tribes have a chisel made of the large bone of a
kangaroo's leg, sharpened to a cutting edge. With this they cut out the
hole that is used on the handle of a shield. It is also usef al in forming
wooden vessels, and in various kinds of native work.

Knives are made of flint, or chert, or quartzite. The stone is chipped to
a cutting edge, and is used either with or without a handle.

It is rather singular that the Tasmanians do not seem to have had stone
tomahawks. They used rough pieces of stone for skinning, and chipping,
and scraping purposes, but without a handle. The Australians also use
chips in the same way, and for cutting the scars on the body ; and for the
operation of circumcision, the tribes in Northern Queensland always use a flint
knife. I have already mentioned that the jags on spear-heads were often
inserted pieces of sharp stone.

Another implement that should -be noticed is the stone hammer. It is a
large stone, or, perhaps, two stones, one end being blunt for hammer work,
and the other sharpened as an axe. The handle appears to be inserted in the
middle, and then lashed to the stone with numerous folds of cord, gum being
used as a binder. Yery few examples of this instrument have been found,
and I rather think that the natives did not find it of much service to them
in their daily work, which seldom requires the aid of a hammer. Unlike the
Maories, the Australians have no stone clubs.

Among implements may be reckoned bone awls, bodkins, pins, and needles.
The awl or bodkin is made from the small bones of the hind legs of the
kangaroo, and is used for boring holes; when furnished with an eye, it is
a woman's needle ; a similar bone from an opossum is used as a picker. In
both cases a sharp point is got by rubbing. Pins for fastening the wearer's
cloak round the shoulders are of bone ; pins for ordinary purposes, such as
pegging down of skins to dry, may be of hardwood.

The ' quern ' stone is a very old institution in other countries ; but for the
purpose of grinding and pounding, the Australian women have only a flat
slab of sandstone and a small hand stone, round or oval in shape, with which
the seeds are' pulverised by rubbing or pounding. Thus from many kinds of
seeds, such as the ' nardu,' which they collect, the natives make a rough kind
of meal which la baked into ' damper.'

jj. ■■, These are not many in numbers, for their wandering mode of

Utensils, j.jg ^^gg ^^^ permit our natives to have much furniture or

many cooking utensils. In fact, the only house furniture that they have is

a tub for holding water and a spoon. There is a mussel shell with which to

78 THE ABOEIGINES OE NEW SOUTH WALES.

sup up liquids, such as gravy in the body of a roasted opossum ; and the tub
is the cup-like bark removed from the gnarled knob growing on some bush-
tree, or the knob removed bodily and then hollowed out with fire, the axe,
and the chisel. These tubs were too large to be carried about, and were,
therefore, made mostly when the tribule intended to remain for some time
at a camping ground. A smaller variety of bucket, however, was carried by
the women, and with water in it, when there was no prospect of getting
water on the journey. Necessarily these buckets are lighter than the tubs,
and are made only of bark from a small gnarl on a gum-tree. They are
furnished with handles of string. Some tribes use skins of the smaller
animals as vessels for the carrying of water.

The native women are very good at making bags, baskets, and nets. The
bags, and baskets are indispensable to them when the family is travelling.
A large semi-circular basket is made of river reeds, which are twisted into
ropes and then plaited into shape. Bags of various shapes are made of grass
and stringy fibre from trees, and the thread or cord which the women spin
from the hair of the opossum or the native cat. Of these bags the loops
are strong and neatly made. I have in my possession a bag of this kind,
given to me by a friend who supplied a native woman on the cattle station
with some old stockings, and got back from her a serviceable bag neatly made
from the worsted. Some bags are made of grasses of various colours ; when
these grasses can be got, they are so used as to form a pattern in the work.
Other baskets are made of flags from the river brink, woven strongly together,
and are so large that they can be slung over the back, and can carry a child.

yy- , In fishing, the blacks use the spear or the net or the hook —

-rr , ■ the spear for large fish and the net where smaller fish are
numerous. The fishing-net is made of kangaroo grass ; the
mesh is about 2, inches in size, and the knot is the same as in European nets,
and was not copied from the white man. " It is not strong enough to be used
as a stake net ; so two men go out on the lagoon, each in a canoe, and drag
the net through the water, \vhile some others splash the water and drive
the fish towards the net. Smaller hand-nets, made of fibre, have a mesh
about an inch in size. The fish hooks used by the natives were of bone
and in shape like a boar's tusk. With European hooks, the blacks, both men
and women, are expert anglers, and can speedily secure a basketful of fish.

VIII.-DEATH AND BURIAL.

Causes of ^^^''^ ^ native is killed in battle, or is so severely wounded
Death *^^* ^^ ^^^^' °^ ^^ crushed to death by a falling branch of a tree,
or dies from some other visible cause, his comrades do not
wonder, because the manner of his death is manifest ; but it is quite otherwise
when a man sickens and dies from no obvious influences ; then the cause of
his death is ascribed to some hidden malevolence on the part either of evil
spirits, or of some wicked ' karaji' or wizard, who, at his own will, or hired
thereto by others, has, by magic arts, put something into the side man's body
sufficient to make him pine away and die. In the firm and universal belief
of our natives, a man among them dies, not because the vital machinery has
got clogged or is worn out, but because he has been bewitched by an enemy.
Those who have read Lenormant on Magic in Chaldeea know that this is a
very old belief, and that it produced there an elaborate ritual as against evil
spirits, and for protection from them. In our country the terror of it so
overpowers the mind, that when a man comes to know that a ' karaji' is

DEA.TH AND BUEIAL. 79

operating against him, lie falls into low spirits from whicli te cannot be
roused, and ere long he dies, just from the fear of the evil that he imagines
is coming upon him. I am disposed to think that this dread belief has" had
an evil effect on the national life of the Australians ; for it has driven out of
their minds the remembrance that there is much good in life, and that even
in their own pantheon there are divinities which are beneiicent, — a remem-
brance which would have given them moral sunshine every day — and this
belief in the predominance of evil has crushed their spirits down, and
prevented them from aspiring to a higher state of social existence. Indeed,
I think that the prevalence of such a belief, in any nation, must always have
the effect of paralysing the public mind, and dragging the people down from
any degree of civilisation which they may have possessed.

So, when an Australian is sick, if the sickness is seen to come from some
intelligible cause, such as a cold or a surfeit in eating, the usual native
remedies are applied, and the matter ends there ; but if the illness comes
from fierce pains in the body, or general debility, or from a swelling of any
kind, then some wicked wizard at a distance has been turning the point of
a magic bone at him, with incantations, to do him harm, or has been burning
a portion of his hair against him, or some other refuse, that he has incau-
tiously left exposed ; or an evil spirit, roving about the camp at night, has
put a round stone in his body, where the lump is, with the intention that
he may fall ill and die ; then, in any of these circumstances the ' karaji' is
sent for, to come and remove the evil, or to counteract the witchery which is
doing so much harm. The ' karaji' sucks out the causes of the pain, or he
puffs and blows with his mouth till the evil spirit is driven away, and the
sick man recovers. But if the man dies, then that shows that the evil
influences have been very strong, or that the witchery of the other ' karaji'
has been too potent for the means intended to promote recovery.

At Death ^^ ®°°^ ^^ ^^^ ^^'^^ ™^^ ^^^' *^® ^^^^ ^°^ ^^® ^^^^ ^® raised,
and the relatives proceed to prepare the body for burial,
while it is still warm. There are many modes of burial, but if the
body is to be buried in a sitting posture — which is a common mode — the dead
man's legs are folded up, and his head bent down, so that knees and chin
nearly touch ; the body is then tied all round with native cord, and wrapped
in a rug which is also tied, so that the whole looks like a round bundle ; thus
it is made ready for the grave. But wherever it is not the fashion to truss
up the body in this way it is simply enclosed in sheets of bark at full length,
and thus prepared ; and the preparation does not take much time, for the
burial takes place not many hours after death. The Kurringgai tribe on our
east coast have a curious way of caring for the dead between death and
burial, which was thus described to me by a friend : — " On the 17th of April,
1842, in the afternoon, hearing shrieks, screams, and lamentations from a camp
about a quarter of a mile from my residence, I proceeded to the spot, and found
a lot of blacks — male and female — wailing and lamenting. I asked one of the
females what was the matter. She replied that a blackfellow was ' boi '
(dead). I asked his name, but only got a shake of the head in reply. She
■pointed to the spot where the body lay, and 1 went over to have a look.
Lying on his back, with his head and shoulders a little raised, was the eldest
son — quite an adult — of the deceased ; and supported on his abdomen and
chest was the body of his father wrapped up in a rug and covered over with
' ti '-tree twigs and boughs. The son exhibited symptoms of much grief. I
pitied him and asked him wliy he lay in that position. He replied that
white men were stupid, and that the blacks always treated their dead in this

80 THE ABORiaiNES 01 NEW SOUTH "WALES.

fashion, for the purpose, as he said, of keeping them warm. How long he
supported his deceased parent thus, I do not know ; for, having ascertained
when and where the burying was to be, I left the camp, intending to be
present to witness the ceremony, as I had never seen a burial." The son's
explanation that he was keeping the body of his father warm is only part of
the truth ; the blacks believe that an evil spirit, whom ' y call ' dibble-
dibble ' is prowling about on such occasions, and that he would carry off the
body and devour it, if it were not guarded ; for there is an evil spirit, which,
as they say, delights to feed on carrion of all sorts.

■w- , n Our natives have many different ways of disposing of their dead.

Burial They inter the body (1) at full length ; (2) lying on its side, with
the lower part of the legs from the knee folded up behind ; (3)
with the body trussed up in a bundle ; (4) with the body erect in the grave ;
(5) with the body laid in a side cavity dug into the earth from the bottom
of a pit ; (6) they place the body in a hollow tree and leave it there, closing
up the aperture with a sheet of bark ; (7) they place the body on a high
raised platform, and afterwards gather the bones of the skeleton, or leave
them on the stage or scattered on the ground ; (8) they carry about these
bones for some time and then inter them ; (9) they do not inter the body,
but merely lay it on the surface of the ground, and cover it over with
logs, or they cover it with a mound of earth, and mark some trees near
by with a peculiar blazon ; (10) they fix the body over a slow fire, and thus
desiccate and smoke it till it is quite hard ; then they carry it about with
them a while and afterwards bury it ; the oil and juices which the fire brings
from the body are rubbed on their own bodies ; (11) they eat the dead body;
(12) in some districts the body is burned. Now, the great variety of
these modes of burial has always seemed to me a strong proof that the
Australian race is very mixed ; for a homogenous nation is very conser-
vative in its modes of the disposal of its dead ; and even cremation in our
own day and country makes little progress against old habit, although it
was common in old times, and is still common in some eastern countries. In
Australia the different modes that I have enumerated all exist in different
localities, except the first, second, and third, which are found in the same
tribe — the Kurringgai. In one portion of that tribe I know of a tribal
cemetery ; for a black likes to be buried near his kindred just as much as we
do, and near the place of his birth ; this burying-ground is on a tongue of
land formed by the river and is well shaded with trees ; and in it that tribule
has laid its dead for many generations. Some have been interred there lying at
full length and others trussed up ; and this seems to indicate that there are
reasons for that difference. The burial in a hollow tree, and still more the
raised stage for the dead body, remind one at once of the " towers of silence"
by which the corpse and the earth were kept from contact with each other ;
and even when they inter, the blacks are careful to surround the body with
boughs so that the earth may not touch it. This novelty of a raised stage
can scarcely be a thing which our blacks have invented for themselves since
they came into Australia; and if it is a custom which some portion of their
ancestors brought with them into this country, I would argue from it that
these ancestors were once in contact with, or rather formed part of, a race
which had beliefs similar to those of the Persians ; such beliefs are not readily
adopted by strangers ; they belong to a race. And further, this practice is
in strange contrast to the trussing and tying of the body elsewhere, which is
done, as the black say, to prevent the spirit of the deceased from wandering
in the night from its bed, and disturbing the living and doing them harm ;
for the spirit of the dead is malevolent for a long time after death. The

DEATH AND BURIAL. 81

roasting of a dead body over a fire seems to us a shameful thing ; but it
corresponds with the mummifying of the dead in Egypt for preservation. A
friend in Queensland said to me one day: — " King Jackey's brother on our
station was dried in this way, and carried about for years by his mother. "We
always knew when " old Alie" had come into the camp by the wail which the
other blacks sent up on her appearance with her burden." The juices are
rubbed on their bodies by the relatives, from the idea that thereby the quali-
ties of the deceased are transferred to them. The same is the explanation
of the horrid practice of eating the dead. The body was first skinned and
then the relatives ate the choice parts, thinking that thereby they became
partakers of the same nature. The laying of the body on the surface of the
ground with a mouud over it is another curious custom ; for this is done
even where the ground is so soft as to admit of easy excavation for a grave.
It is an old custom, and, as such, there must be some reason for it.

rpi ri p The most interesting, because the most novel, form of grave is
that of the side cave driven horizontally in from the bottom of
the pit. Such a custom must be ancestral, for there is nothing whatever to
make it necessary. The Groulburn blacks in Victoria did this ; so did the
Omeo blacks in Grippsland ; but I have found that the same custom existed
in Eiji and also in Java. Can this curious observance have been invented in-
dependently in these diverse places ? In Fiji, when the shaft is to be sunk,
the first sod is cut with much ceremony ; then the pit is sunk and the grave
chamber made, and the chief laid therein with his strangled wives. "When
all is over, the sods are carefully replaced and every eft'ort used to remove
all traces of an excavation. In Fiji also, as with us, there are different modes
of burial ; the corpse is laid at full length with its head resting on the
wooden bar which is used in households as a pillow; or the legs are drawn
up and the body doubled till the knees touch the chin, the elbows being put
close to the sides and the hands turned up ; the whole is then bound
together securely.

"When our dead native Is to be interred, his male friends — his father, son,
uncle — go to a soft piece of ground and with their tools — a tomahawk,
digging-stick and hands, they dig a circular hole about three feet deep and
two feet in diameter, as much as will hold the body ; the bottom of the grave
is then lined with ' ti '-tree bark, the body is laid thereon, and pieces of stringy-
bark are placed all round it ; the eartli is then filled in, leaving a depression
at the top, on which a relative sleeps for several nights, to prevent the evil
spirits from carrying off the body. On the Darling Eiver, a mound is raised
over the grave and a low fence of brushwood put round it, and, just inside
the fence and around the grave, are laid many pieces of white plaster shaped
like eggs. I think that these white eggs are put there as charms against
the approach of evil spirits ; for Layard says that, '■ in the court around the
tomb of the founder of the Tezidis, there is a small recess filled with balls
of clay taken from the tomb of the saint. These are sold or distributed
to pilgrims and regarded as very sacred — useful against diseases and evil
spirits, and to be buried with the dead." And Threlkeld states that in the
Australian Bora ceremonies the word yarro, which means 'egg,' is used in a
mystic sense also for ' fire' or ' water.' And among the Khasias — a hill tribe
of north-eastern India — an illness is exorcised by the breaking of eggs, among
other methods. A mystic egg also figures largely in some of the most
ancient cosmogonies.

In Northern Q.ueensland, when the body is about to be buried, a fire is
first kindled in the grave — evidently to drive out the evil spirits — and after
the grave is closed, a fire is kept burning ou the surface — evidently to drive

82 THE ABOEIGINES OP NEW SOUTH WALES.

off the evil spirits at Biglit ; if the corpse is placed m a hollow tree, the
piece which has been cut out of the tree to admit the corpse is carefully
replaced— evidently to prevent the spirits from knowing that there is a body
there. At Wide Bay, also in Queensland, the natives are very careful not
to allow any of the earth to touch the body that is buried ; and, to accom-
plish this, they make a stage of sticks and bark over the body, and on this
they pile the earth that closes the grave. They also make mounds over the
graves. In the Wiradhari country. New South Wales, a hut is erected over
the grave, and thither friends come for several months ; but after a year or
so the hut is pulled down.

Even the digging of a grave seems to be attended with some danger ; for
at Cooper's Creek the men who go to do this work daub their bodies all over
with red and white spots and put pipeclay on their heads. In Fiji also, the
man who has dug the grave of a chief is unclean for a year. In South
Australia, the corpse is rubbed over with red ochre ; and the same is done on
the coast of New Gruinea. In the red colour there must be some virtue
which is of service to the dead in their subsequent existence as spirits, and
probably in their first passage into spirit land, like the Grecian 'obolus' placed
between the teeth of the dead man.

73 , . 7 The rites of burial are varied to suit the mode which the tribe
" ^'^ ' practises, but there are some accompaniments of burial which are
invariable. These are : — questions put to the deceased in order to ascertain
who was the cause of his death ; the relatives wail at the grave in token of
grief, and make gashes on their heads with cutting instruments or burn their
bodies with fire sticks. Mourning is put on and worn for some time after
the burial ; and a wail of grief is raised every evening for a month or two ;
the name of the deceased is never mentioned again ; and, if any common
word formed part of his name, that word is dropped and another substituted
for it. After the burial, all the blacks dwelling there at the time of the
death shift their camp to another place. These customs I shall presently
illustrate by examples. But first let me make some general remarks.

Some of our blacks are long-lived. I knew one or two who were sup-
posed to be over eighty years of age, and one of these, although paralysed
and helpless, and lying on the ground in his rude ' gunya,' was contented
and merry ; he was carefully tended by his two daughters. " Another black"
says a friend, " must be nearly a hundred years of age from all accounts."
But wherever they are brought into contact with the vices of white men, as
in our larger towns, they die off very rapidly. I am told that in the Mait-
land district, fifty years ago, there was a warrior known as Jimmy; he and
his son, and his grandson, all died within thirty years.

An old person, when no longer able to follow the camp as it moves about
from place to place, and evidently near death, is left at a suitable spot in
charge of one or two others ; if a woman, she is placed in the care of a woman
and a girl ; a man has a man and a boy left with him. When death comes,
these dig the grave and inter the body or bury it otherwise, and then rejoin
the camp.

The blacks, as I have said, bury in any soft ground which may happen to
be near, but some ti'ibes have regular burying-grounds which have been used
for generations, and are cojisidered sacred. To these a corpse will be
brought from a distance of many miles. " My black boy," says a friend,
" wishes to be buried where he was reared." This is the idea of kinship and
clanship even in spirit-land. I need not compare with this similar practices
and desires in all ages and countries.

DEATH AND B¥EIAL. ' 83

"Wlierever a tribe inters tlie dead, after the grave is neatly dug, the body
is slung on a long pole borne on the shoulders of two relatives, and is
carried thus to the place of interment, followed by a company of friends ;
but, before it is placed in the grave, a wizard, standing by, questions the
deceased and asks him what enemy it was that bewitched him and so caused
his death, and so on, to which questions answers are given by an old black
on the other side ; sometimes these questions are asked while the body is on
its way to the grave, the bearers standing still for a little to see if the dead
man, by any movement, supplies an answer. "When the body is in the grave,
weapons and articles of clothing are placed beside the dead ; all present, and ■
especially his relatives, contributing something ; thus they show their belief
in a life after death ; the women and the men then utter pitiful yells and
cut their heads till these stream with blood, or they take up fire-brands, if
they are near, and with them burn scars on the skins. This custom is of
very ancient date ; for the Mosaic law says, " Ye shall not make any cuttings
in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you." The mourning
for the dead is continued for three or four months ; the bereaved relatives,
mostly the women, smear their head with pipe-clay, and at supper time and
during the night raise loud cries of mourning.

Where the grave is like ours in shape, the body is simply wrapped at full
length in two sheets of bark, secured with stout cords, and laid in the grave ;
above the body is placed another sheet of bark, then grass, logs, and earth,
the earth on the surface being left as a mound. In one part of Queensland,
two sticks are set up in the ground near the grave ; each is about 2 feet long,
shaped like a club, and painted red ; their tops are covered with fine white
down from the cockatoo. In the Kamalarai country, not only is the bark of
the adjacent trees marked with devices, but another grave is dug near by — a
sort of cenotaph — for no body is put in it ; this they do, the blacks say, " to
cheat the Kruben." The ' Kruben' is a malevolent spirit that wanders about
at night, and carries off little children from the camp, and punishes those
men who are so wicked as to break any of the tribal laws of restriction ; and
" cheating the Kruben" seems to imply that he tears and devours the spirit
of the dead, and perhaps their bodies too.

,py ^j , The tribes also believe that, after a man's death, his spirit
'^ ' wanders about, revisits the grave, interviews the spirits of its
living friends in dreams, eats up' the remains of food left lying about, and
warms itself at the night fires. Thus, when Buckley was seen sitting on a
grave, feeble from want of food, and with a broken spear in his hand, he was
naturally regarded as the spirit of the deceased black man come back to
visit his body, and was welcomed by the tribule as one of themselves.

Something analogous to all this is found among the blacks of Lower Gruiuea.
"When a man dies there, they ascribe his decease to the enchantments of an
enemy. At the grave they ask the corpse to tell who it was that took away
his life by sorcery ; why he departed ; was it because he was dissatisfied ;
and so on. They believe that souls pass into other bodies, but that the
spirit of the deceased still lives in another state, and therefore they inter
with him most of his own effects, and valuable presents from his friends.
They believe also that the wizards, by their incantations, can raise the dead
man to life, and make him hunt and fish and work for them. Therefore,
they erect at the burying place a wooden image of the god who is the
guardian of the dead ; thus the wizards are foiled. Is this the meaning of
the carvings on the trees and the red sticks at the graves of our own
indigenes ?

84 THE ABORIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

cr/ •/> ri Our blackfellows desert their camp when one of themhas died;

■^ "' so also do the Hottentots. An explanation of this may be got

in a belief, shared by many ancient nations, but most developed among the
Hindus, that, when the " gross body" is laid in the grave or burned, the isoul
still lives in a material form, but that at first this is only a " subtile body,"
not a real one, and therefore restless and miserable — a foul, wandering ghost,
" unhouseled, disapiJointed, unaneled,"-^so miserable as to have delight in
doing miserable acts, and taking revenge on all living creatures. Hence,
also, among various nations of old, savage and civilised, funeral rites were
renewed at various intervals ; for it was by these that the spirit gradually
attained to the possession of a real body, capable of enjoying its new life.

rpi -p 7 '^° illustrate the funeral arrangements of the tribes, I now

give two quotations from private sources : — " King Jackey's
funeral, August, 1833. A long neck of land is here formed by the junction
■of a creek with the river, and the extremity of it, surrounded on three sides
■by thickly growing timber, was the place of interment, — as pretty a spot
■for the purpose I know of nowhere. When I approached, I saw an old man
digging the grave. This was a most laborious task, for the ground was very
hard, and the only tool he used was a tomahawk. The form of the grave
was oval, and its depth when finished was a little short of four feet. There
were about a dozen or more of blacks squatting or standing around, and
.amongst them the father, mother, and several brothers of the deceased. The
parents were howling in company, the man's voice resembling the three
sounds a — a — ar, long dwelt upon. The female's was more a treble, like
ei — ou — ou. This noise they kept up without intermission. The body,
'itself, trussed up in as small a compass as possible and wrapped in rugs, was
on the ground about four yards from the grave, supported by two relatives,
-who, as they bent over it on their knees, gave full tokens of their grief and
affection. The digging being finished, the sexton went to. some of the
youngest and freshest looking trees; breaking off the small leafy branches, he
proceeded to line the grave with them. When this was done, the brother of
the deceased descended to try whether the grave was comfortable, which he
did by Ijing in it in the position the body was to occupy. Some slight
alterations were required, and when these were made the younger members
■ of the family came forward, and, surrounding the corpse, lifted it from the
-ground. While doing this, they gave a gceat shout, and blew with their
mouths, and waved with their hands over the body. These same observances
were repeated while the body was being lowered into the grave, where the
-brother of the deceased had already placed himself, ready to receive the body,
■and to lay it carefully so that not a particle of earth should touch it. The
shout then set up by all of them was awfully deafening. The old father,
rushing by me, seized a tomahawk and cut his head in several places, until
the blood gushed in quantities from the wounds. Another old man snatched
the instrument from him and covered his own head with gashes ; three or
four did the same, some most viciously, while others seemed to think that
very little of that sort of thing was enough. The howling continued all the
while. Sheets of bark were now placed carefully over the body, and the old
men stretched themselves at full length on the ground and howled dread-
fully. One of them at length got up, and took a piece of bark which he
placed across the grave, and stretched himself on it, crying with all his might.
I then left them, nothing of the ceremony remaining but the filling up of the
grave."

Another friend, from whom I have quoted elsewhere, thus describes an in-
terment which he saw in 1812 :—" I repaired to the spot indicated on the

DEATH AND BUEIAL. 85

following day, and found that a grave had been dug after the English
fashion, and in a short time the body was brought on a sheet of bark,
■wrapped in a rug, on the shoulders of four of the tribe. They deposited the
body beside the grave, collected a lot of leaves aud twigs, which they spread
on the bottom of the grave and along its sides. The body was then lowered
down, — about three feet and a half — and when the earth and stones began
to descend, the eldest son jumped up, gave a fearful yell, drew his tomahawk
from his belt, and inflicted two or three severe cuts on his head, before his
friends could wrench the weapon from his grasp. I really thought he would
have killed himself. When the tomahawk was secured, he sat down, sobbing
and "weeping, on a stone at the head of the grave, the blood trickling, nay
flowing, rapidly down his face and breast, and there was quite a pool of
blood at his feet, before the ceremony was ended. All the males of the tribe
seemed really sad and sorry, as the poor old man w^as very much respected.
About a hundred yards from the grave, the females had established a fire
before the corpse arrived; they commenced a dirge and gave expression ta
deep grief and sympathy ; when the body was covered up, they howled and
lamented pitifully, and with fire-sticks burned their arms in different places,
but not seriously ; a few had the pluck to tap their heads with a tomahawk
to the effusion of blood, but they did it gently. I went up to the women,
when I saw what they were doing, and asked the reason why they chopped'
their heads and burned their arms, and I was told it was the custom. I
asked if they were sorry, but they said they were not. This ended the first
and last aboriginal funeral I ever witnessed. The man's name was never-
afterwards mentioned, nor his grave visited, by any of the tribe."

Cause of In the New Hebrides islands, similar beliefs and customs exist.
Death. A friend, wa-iting to me from Epi there, says : — " Unless the
person is very old or the cause of death is very obvious, the natives here
generally ascribe the death to an evil spirit called ' Semi,' who ' poisons '
people ; ' semi' means ' poison.' Very often he acts by human agency,
and many a suspect is shot in consequence. The body is sewed up in matting
and banana leaves. The burial is usually on the day following the death.
All relatives or other friends of the deceased within a reascnaljle distance
attend. There is a great wailing kept up by the women within the enclosure
where the body lies. The men simply look in for a minute or two to cry,
and then retire. Two male relatives dig the grave. The body is lowered,
and a great quantity of banana leaves is laid over it before the earth is filled'
in. The disembodied spirit is supposed to haunt the scenes of its former
life. Cocoa-nuts, bananas, pudding, and other kinds of food are often hung-
on a tree or stick beside the grave, for the refreshment of the wandering-
spirit. Sometimes, in the still night a brother shouts out the name of the
departed, and tells him, with all the strength of his lungs, " Cocoanuts and
bananas are here ; come and take them."

rp Our indigenes, in the western part of the colony of Victoria,

o ."J?, think that children under five years of age have no spirits, but
^^^ * ■ every person over that age has not only a soul or spirit of natural
life, but also another spirit which takes a visible but undefined form after
death ; it frequents the dead man's grave for a time, but disappears when
any one comes near. For it a fire is kept burning all night near the spot.
Elsewhere, in Victoria, it is said that the spirit, after hovering for a time
near the grave, finally goes off towards the setting sun ; and for its con-
venience, or rather guidance, where a long grave is used, the head is laid
towards the east and the feet to the west ; elsewhere it is the reverse. This
spirit is the wraith or likeness of himself, which accompanies every adult

8G THE ABOEIGINES OP NEW SOUTH WALES.

all through life, but is not visible to himself or auy one else until he sees it
when death approaches. The tribes near Kew Nurcia, in Western Australia,'
believe that, when a man is buried, his spirit sits on the branches of a tree near
by, singing dolefully like a bird.

Among the Kamalarai, the shroud of bark which encloses the body is
furnished with ornamental appendages, which make it twice or three times
the length of the body within. The grave is only a deep hole, and the corpse
is placed therein upright. No earth is allowed to touch the head, which is
protected by timber above it. A mound is raised over the grave. In letting
down the body, those near say ' whirr.' They make little fires about the
grave "to drive away evil spirits from the living," as some say; but others
say the fires are for the benefit of the dead.

In Victoria, also, no one cared to touch a dead body with his hand ; that
brings defilement ; and, in burying, the utmost care was used to cover
every part of the body and save it from contact with the earth. But in other
parts of the same colony no such care was used, aud the body was prepared
for burial by greasing, and rubbing over with red ochre. In South Australia,
the Narrinyeri desiccate the body and carry it about wdth them in that state
for months. The skeleton is then left on a raised platform of sticks. The
skull is sometimes preserved. A similar practice exists near East Cape, in
New Gruinea. There the dead are buried in a sitting posture, with the hands
folded. The earth is filled in up to the mouth only ; an earthern pot covers
the head. After a time, the skull is taken up and hung up in a net within
the house of the deceased.

Eevenae "*" ^^^'® ^^^'^ that, at the burial, the dead man is interrogated as
■^ ' to the cause of his death. This is no idle form ; for, if the kins-
men imagine that they have got sure indications of the perpetrator of the
wrong, they are resolute in taking vengeance. This they consider a duty
which lies upon them all, to avenge their friend's death. These indications
would seem to us futile enough, but we are not Australian blackfellows. Of
course, the questioning does not often induce answers sufilcient to satisfy the
friends ; hence other modes are used. On the night before the burial, a male
relative lays himself on the dead man's body, expecting to get some sign from
the deceased. If a sound is heard, perhaps it may be from a kangaroo rat,
it is taken as a hint from the dead, and the direction from which it comes is
the direction in which they should seek for the enemy ; or after the burial, the
earth on the grave is watched, and the track of the first beetle or worm that
emerges shows the direction in which they ought to go ; even the way in
which the clay covering of a grave cracks is a sign. As soon as the relatives
have persuaded themselves that they know who it is that has caused tlie
death, they organise a revenge party of three or four men ; these travel by
night and use every effort to conceal their movements until they can pounce
upon the suspected man, and thrust him through with a spear. In all
likelihood, it is an innocent man who is thus killed ; and so there arises a
blood-feud between his kindred and the perpetrators of the wrong, if they can
be discovered ; and matters go on in this way among the tribules and tribes,
until there is scarcely a man of them who does not feel that his life is
constantly in danger from one cause or another. Need we wonder, then, that
under the influence of so depressing sources of dread and uncertainty, social
life among our indigenes should tend rather to degradation than to elevation.

Analoriies '^^^ Papuans have customs quite analogous to these in relation

•^ " ' to their dead. The Ivoiari tribe, near the south coast of New

Guinea, keep fires burning night aud day for months at the head and foot of

DEATH AND BTJEIAL. 87

the grave ; tlie body is also desiccated as in South Australia and thus becomes
almost a dry skeleton ; then it is covered with a uniformly red colour. In
the process of drying by fire, the entire skin is first removed and the relatives
who do this — parents or spouse — rub the juices which the fire brings from
the body all over theirown person. To discover who is blameable for the
death, the wizard places on the corpse, at burial, several straws to represent
the number and position of the villages around ; he then begins his sacred
song ; and if a fly, or beetle, or other insect alights on any one of the straws,
that tells him where the guilty person lives. Suspicion does the rest of the
work. In the same locality, a small hut, having offerings within, is erected
over a grave, and if a husband lies there, the widow sits at the head of it
besmeared all over with ashes ; to this hut the widow repairs again and again,
perhaps twice a day, for several years, still wearing the garb of mourning.
The grave is not filled in. The body lies with the feet to the sea ; but in the
eastern Pacific the face is laid towards the rising sun. A Papuan tribe,
some distance inland from Port Moresby, do not often inter their dead, but
leave the body in a small hut which the relatives often visit ; when they do
inter, the body stands in the grave. If there are many deaths, the whole
village removes to another spot.

In Fiji, a few of the burial customs are similar to those in Australia. Por
instance, the grave is about three feet deep, mats are laid on the bottom, and
the corpse is also wrapped in mats ; a pent-house or roof, a few feet high,
is put over some graves ; the women make blazes on their bodies in token of
grief; the face of the dead is painted with vermilion. "VYomen there some-
times refuse to part with the dead body of a child, and keep it beside them ;
a local queen caused her dead child to be suspended in a bos from the
roof of a temple, and food to be ofl^ered to it for months.
jij- ■ Our own black women mourn as sincerely and deeply for a

•'' dead child as any mother can do. One woman persisted in
carrying a child about for a long time, even while the stench was such that
none could stay near her. Among the pigmy blacks of the Andaman Islands,
the parents and relatives weep for hours beside the corpse of an infant ; for
mourning, they put a lump of white clay over their foreheads, and leave it
there till the days of mourning are ended ; our blacks do the same with the
pipe-clay on their heads. The Andamanese mother then paints the head,
neck, wrists, and knees of her dead child with red clay and white clay, and
folding the body, knees to chin and hands to the shoulder, just as pur black
fellows do for adults, she wraps it in leaves which are secured to the body
with cords ; the body is buried in a sitting posture ; near the grave she places
some of her own milk, and kindles a fire there ; and the whole encampment
moves off to a distance of several miles. The Andamanese make the same
kind of mourning for adults, but they carry their adult dead into the jungle,
and either inter the bodies there or place them on a platform. In the grave
the body is set with the face to the east; they blow on the face to say good-
bye, and then fill in the grave ; a fire is kindled there, and water and some
other serviceable articles are placed near ; the brushwood for some distance
around the grave is cleared away ; if on a platform, the body is still made to
look to the east, because, as they s"ay, the abode of the dead is there.

In some parts of Australia, the blacks will not go near a recent grave for
a month or so after the interment ; but on the Murray Eiver, near Went-
worth, one or two friends visit the grave every morning for about a month to
keep the fires burning and the ground around the grave carefully swept.
If there are no foot-prints of spirits to be seen on the cleared ground, they
conclude that the spirit of the dead man does not wander at night, and is
therefore happy and does not require the fire or any further attention.

as THE ABORIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

I have already said that, in Queensland, a certain tribe marks the trees
near a grave with red spots, and set^ up two red sticks with white cockatoo
feathers on them a-top. On Car Nicobar Island, in the Bay of Bengal, the
natives set up a post with peculiar marks on it at the head of a grave ; when
the body is decayed, they disinter the hones, and cast them into the deep sea.
These same Nicobarese use the toes for picking up anything, just as our
blacks do.

But more striking analogies than these are to be found in African regions.
Du Chaiila says : — " My servant, Ishungui, died. The relatives of the
deceased slept one night m his house, as a mark of respect, and then all that
remained was to discover the person who had bewitched the dead man.
When all was ready for the trial, I went down to look at the doctor, who
looked literally like the devil. I never saw a more ghastly object. He had
on a high head-dress of black feathers. His eyelids were painted red, and a
red stripe from the nose upwards, divided his forehead in two parts. Another
red stripe passed round his head. The face was painted white, and on each
side of the mouth were two round red spots. Erom each shoulder, down to
his hands, was a white stripe, and one hand was painted quite white."

" They fear the spirits of the recently departed ; and, besides placing fur-
niture, dress, and food at their graves, they return from time to time, with
other supplies of food. When men and women are slain over a grave, they
even believe that their spirits join that of him in whose honour they have
been killed. During the season of mourning, the deceased is remembered
and feared, but when once his memory grows dim, they cease to believe in
the prolonged existence of the departed spirit. Ask a negro where the
spirit of his grandfather or great grandfather whom he did not know is,
and he will reply confidently that it is ' done, gone out, no more ;' or that he
does not know where it has gone. The fear of spirits of the departed seems
an instinctive feeling for which they do not attempt even themselves to
account, and about which they have formed no theory. They believe the
spirit is near and about them ; that it requires food and property ; that it can
and sometimes does harm them. They think it a vindictive thing, to be feared
and to be conciliated. But, as the memory of the departed grows dim so
does the fear of his spirit vanish."

"The greatest curse of the whole country is the belief in 'aniemba,'
sorcery or witchcraft. The African firmly believes death to be always a
violence. If the African is once possessed with the belief that he is
bewitched, his whole nature seems to change. He becomes suspicious of
his dearest friends. The father dreads his children, the son his father'and
mother, the man his wife, and the wives their husbands. He fancies himself
sick, and really often does become sick through his fears. By night he thinks
himself surrounded with evil spirits ; he covers himself with fetiches and
charms, makes presents to the idol, and to [the great spirits] Abambou and
Mbuiri ; and is full of wonder and frightful dreams, which all point to the
fact that the village is full of wicked sorcerers."

" I find that the superstitions of the people [the Apingi] are as great as
those of the tribes nearer the sea. They hold that death is caused by
witchcraft, but yet they do not remove after every death, as do the Camma,
Shekiana, Bakalai, and the other tribes. Among the sea-shore tribes, the
Apingi have great repute as wizards, and Apingi-land is the land of
' aniemba,' where anyone may learn to become a powerful sorcerer. Con-
sequently the Apingi fetiches are very highly valued by the coast tribes,
especially those professing to remove barrenness."

DEATH AND BUEIAL. S9

" The natives of Equatorial Africa are perpetually changing the sites of
their villages in obedience to their migratory instincts, which they do
not recognise, and for which they make the most absurd excuses, saying
that a man has died in that town, and that the place has become unlucky ; or
that a leopard has been seen prowling about and that they are afraid. They
believe in the transmigration of souls ; some think that after death they
become white men ; the soul transmigrates into the bodies of birds and
animals, others say. Criminals, however, are debarred from taking a second
lease of life, even in the humblest form ; they fly about as ghosts aud
torment mankind by their hideous appearance. Most of the negroes
exercise baptismal rites, and the practice of circumcision seems to be
universal in Africa, except at Accra. The initiatory ceremonies in Northern
G-uinea are of a higher order. The novice is shut up in a house during
eight days. Pood is given him once a day, and he sees only the slave who
brings it. At the end of that time, masked men present themselves to him
to try his courage in every possible way. If he braves the test, he is made
an adept."

" By a light and constant fire in the anus, the intestines are dried up like
parchment. The body is then plastered over with red clay, and rolled up in
cloth until it becomes a shapeless mass. The richer the person, the more
cloth he receives. Einally he is buried in a large grave, over which is
erected a roofless house. In Loango there is this difference — the body is
more rudely prepared by being smoked on a scaff'old over a green fire, in
the same manner as they dry their fish or their elephant meat. Erom six
months to a year, according to the rank of the deceased, the mummy is
exposed in a sacred house, to which his relatives come at stated periods to
mourn. After this he is placed in a coffin shaped like a barrel, and conveyed
to the grave in a kind of car."

"As we approached [the Shekiani village], the women caught sight of me,
and ran screaming into the houses. It is curious that nothing excites so
much terror in an interior African village as the appearance of a.ivJii/e man "

There is enough in these extracts to prove that the ideas of these
Equatorial Africans as to death and its causes are the same as those that
prevail among our Australian blacks. But similar ideas existed among the
Jews also more than 1,800 years ago, as this extract will show : —

"In addition to their reputed powers as prophets and interpreters of
dreams, the Essenes were also held iu high estimation as medicine-men.
Among the Jews of the time of Christ, most diseases were looked upon
either as the work of evil spirits, or as punishments inflicted upon men by
the immediate decree of an offended God. But the main tendency of
Jewish thought, in the time 'of Christ, was to attribute diseases to the
machinations of the powers of evil. At the head of this malignant host
stood Satan, the prince of the world, and he was surrounded by a multitude
of inferior spirits. Many of these demons were believed to be the souls
of the dead who roamed through the air, haunting tombs and desert
places, in a disembodied form. The ghosts of the giants who lived in
antediluvian times, the ghosts of the builders of the tower of Babel, and the
ghosts of those multitudes who perished at the Elood, were all numbered
among the evil spirits which brought diseases and death on men, and the
spirits of the wicked became demons after death. These demons entered
the human body by the nostrils, being presumably inhaled with the breath ;
they produced dumbness, lameness, madness, blindness, epilepsy, and indeed
every ailment of which there was the least doubt about the origin. Once a

90 THE ABOEIGINES OP NEW SOUTH WALES.

demon had taken possession of a man, the ordinary manner o£ getting him
expelled was by resorting to the mysterious processes of exorcism. The
Jews had a wide reputation throughout the Eoman Empire as exorcists ; the
rabbis practised exorcism in Palestine, and there can be little doubt that the
Essenes made use of it as well. The spells and incantations on which the
exorcists relied were believed to have been handed down by such men as
Noah, David, Solomon, who in turn were supposed to have learned them
from the angels."

IX. CONCLUSION.

In conclusion, let anyone ask me how it is that our aborigines have sunk
so low in the scale of humanity as to be regarded as among- the most
degraded of the races of men. I deny that this estimate of them is well
founded ; on the contrary, I assert that it was formed long ago by thosp
who imperfectly understood the habits and the social organisation of our
native tribes, and has been ignorantly passed from mouth to mouth ever
since ; that when these are thoroughly examined, our blacks are not the
despicable savages that they are too often represented to be. They have or
had virtues which some of us might profitably imitate ; they are faithful
and affectionate to those who treat them kindly ; they have rules of
family morality which are enforced by severe penalties. They show the
greatest respect to age ; they carefully tend and never desert the sick and
infirm ; their boys are compelled to content themselves with meagre fare,
and to bring the best of the food which they have found and to present it
to the aged members of the tribe and i,o those who have large families. I
am assuretL by one who had much intercourse with them for thirty years
that he never knew them to tell a He, and that his property was always safe
in their hands. Another of my friends says : — " At Cobark, long ago, the
station, with the stores and everything else, was left for a whole fortnight
in the charge of the black servants, the white men being away on business ;
on their return not a thing was missed." Another who has been familiar
with them since he was a child, says : — " Naturally they are an affectionate,
peaceful people; and, considering that they have never been taught to know
right from wrong, their behaviour is wonderful ; I leave my house open, the
camp being close by, and feel the greatest confidence in them."

Then, again, although the material civilisation of the world was commenced
by the race of Ham, yet the task soon fell from their hands, for morally
they were unfit for it ; for the conservation and the first dissemination of a
pure and undefiled religion, we are indebted to the race of Shem ; while the
sons of Japheth, audax lapeti genus, have gone forth to rule the earth and
the sea — even, Columbus-like, penetrating to the regions of the Ear West —
and to spread the blessings of good government, and the arts and inventions
of an enlightened age to the remotest lands. The Hamites, on the other
hand, have continued to sink in the social scale, have been crushed down by
the other races, and thus debased ; and wherever, as in our island here, the
sky above and the earth beneath have conspired to render the means of life
meagre and jDrecarious, there the process of decay has been accelerated, and
physically and socially their condition has been very low ; but still among
their institutions there are traces of better things. Would that we had a
full record of what they really are before they pass away from among us !

i'

APPENDIX. 91

X. APPENDIX.

THE ILLUSTRATIONS.

1. Map of New South Wales, as occupied by the Native Tribes ... Frontuinece.

This is at once a Map of tlie Colony of New South Wales and of the native
tribes in it. No attempt has hitherto been made to show the precise extent
of territory occupied by each of these tribes ; their location has been under my
consideration and inquiry for the past ten years, and I believe that the results
now shown are nearly correct. The conditions which determine the bounds
of a tribe are explained on page 36 of this pampldet. The names Yunggai,
Paikalyrmg, Wachigari, and Murriuggari or Murrinjari, I have made ; for,
although these tribes have special names for their sub-tribes, they do not seem
to have any general name for the whole tribe. Yung is the name for New
England, the table-land occupied by that tribe; Wachi is the local word
for 'no.'

2. Plan oe a Boea-grouxd, showing Maeked Trees 11

This Bora ground is near the township of Gloucester, about 70 miles to the
north of Newcastle. It lies in the thickest depths of the forest there, on a
mountain spur which runs east and west. The last Bora ceremony was held
there twenty years ago. On this ground, as usual, the path from the lower
circle to the sacred one leads up hill, and so the site of the latter cannot be
seen from below. The plan is drawn to scale, and shows the upper circle to
be much larger than the other. The number of candidates to be initiated
sometimes makes this necessary ; for the young men have to lie on the ground
within the sacred circle for days or weeks together ; there may have been
fifteen or twenty candidates on that occasion — an unusually large number.
The Bora ceremonies are dying out, for the young men now refuse to be
initiated.

The exigencies of the plan make the carved trees look like stumps, but they
are all tall and stout gum trees. I examined this ground five years ago.

3. CAP.^nxG OTS a Boka Thee 42

This also is a marked tree at a Bora circle near Gloucester, but 15 miles
to the north-east of it. The figure of the iguana on the tree I take to be an
emblem of one of the native, gods ; that animal is a totain to one of the tribal
classes. In heraldry the two human figures would be called "supporters."
The whole is drawn to scale.

4. Disposal of the Dead 80

These two figures are photographed from the originals which are now in the
Australian Museum, Sydney. The skeleton shows the most common of the
modes of burial, and the other is a corpse as desiccated and carried about.

5. Photograph of an Indigene of the Minyung Teidr 91

This is a good specimen of one native type; he is a Clarence River black.

PHYSICAL MEASUREMENTS.

There are now scarcely five thousand full-blood blacks in New South Wales. Notwith-
standing the fostering care of our Government and of the Aborigines' Protection Societies,
these natives are rapidly dying out, and ere long only the name and memory of the
tribes will be left in oui^ territory. As yet, not much has been done here to secure a
faithful record of what they are and have been. The present Commissioners to the
World's Fair have wisely resolved to make a beginning in the collection of scientific data
as to the physical condition of the blacks still alive within our borders, and of the
craniological features of the race in the past. For this purpose they have asked Dr. J. T.
Wilson, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Sydney, to examine some of the
aboriginal skulls now in the Australian Museum, Sydney, and they have got the police
surgeons and the police to make anthropometric measurements of the natives in various
parts of the colony. The data which have thus been obtained in the interests of science
are very valuable ; but, as they are copious and elaborate, only a mere abstract of them
can be given in this pamphlet, and this I now do by the direction of the Commissioners.

92 THE ABOEIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

1.— AWTHEOPOMETRT.

In this section tlie returns obtained from the various localities give the name, age,
weight, &c. , of eacli person measured, but I have condensed these returns for the
purposes of this pamphlet by striking the average for each particular, according to the
number of persons shown. Therefore, in the tabulated view given below, tlie columns
are arranged thus : —

1 — The place near wliicli the persons measured are iisiially found.

2 — The map No. of the tribe in which that place lies.

3 — The number of individuals who were there measured.

4 — Their averarje age in years.

5 — Their average height in inches.

6 — Their average girth round the chest in inches.

7 — Their average weirjht in lbs.

All who were sixteen years old and under are reckoned as boys and girls. The various
places at which these pliysical measurements were taken are indicated in column 1 of
the tabulated view by the Italic letters prefixed to the names in the following list : —

I. Kamalarai Tribe, No. (on map) I, 11, III —

u, — Walgett h — Goodooga c — Cobar

d — Coonamble e — Wollar (near Gulgong)

IV. YoNG-GAi Tribe, No, IV—

f — Ashford g — Eundara h — Walcha

V. Yakka-jari Tribe, No. V —

i — Wellingrove (near Glen Innes) k — Tenterfield

VI. Paikal-yung Tribe, No. VI —

I — Grafton o — Lower Clarence Eiver

m — Lismore p) — Wardell (on Richmond River)

H— Casino g — Murwillumbah (on Tweed River)

VII. Wachi-gari Tribe, No. VII—

r — Oban (near Kookabookra)

VIII. KuRi.N-G-GAi Tribe, No. VIII—

s — Windsor t — Picton

IX. MuRRiN-jARi Tribe, No. IX—

u — Kiama ?/— Nelligen (near Bateman's Bay)

V — Nowra z — Eden

w — Yass aa — Eurobodalla (near Tuross River)

a;— Queanbeyau 16— Wallaga Lake (near Mount Dromedary)

cc — Twilingah (near Moruya)

X. Ngarego Tribe, No. X — •

cM— Cooma ce— Delegate (near Bombala)

XI. Wira-dhari Tribe, No. XI—

/— Obley (south of Dubbo) gg — Narrandera M— Nyngan

ii— Brewarrina Mission Station, No. II.
Ick — Brungle IMission Station (near Tumut), No. XI.

APPENDIX.

TABLE I.— I"TJLIi-BLOOD BLOCKS.

2

MEN.

WOMEN".

BOYS.

GIRLS.

1

3

4

5

6

7

3

4

5

6

7

3

4

5

6

7

3

4

5

6

7

a

I

3

35

69

36

149

3

33

63

36|

148

3

6

42

23}

63

b

II

3

62J

66

371

148}

3

41}

60

31J

118

3

10}

47

23}

65

c

III

3

40

66

33i

131}

3

43}

61}

32

99}

8

6}

38}

281

40}

d

,,

i

38J

67i

37J

157}

3

37

62

34

125

4

9i

62}

24}

78}

e

I

2

67i

665

34

134}

4

33}

62

38}

149

2

10}

62

28}

69

t

IV

3

51

67

38}

138}

2

45

64}

84

106}

1

13

60

27}

90

9

,,

4

47

663

46J

145

2

301

66

88}

119

h

,,

3

46J

68J

37

162

3

32}

66

37}

150}

2

12

56

27

83}

i

V

1

43

69J

38

168

k

>l

26

44J

66J

35

142

11

46}

60

81}

109

4

133

69}

291

95i

1

7

45J

21}

42

I

YI

3

46

68

37

167

3

47

62

37

116

3

12

62

25}

72

m

,,

1

36

68

SSI

157

2

45

63J

32J

103

1

9

51

26

64

lb

„

1

48

66

38

154

1

35

63

30

93

1

6

46

24

34

„

35

42

663

34

127}

19

34}

60}

31}

116}

5

6

45

20

43}

9

6

41}

21}

45}

P

„

2

29J

66|

36J

161

1

40

64

34

119

1

12

53}

27

70

3

„

3

35

67J

35

140}

3

29}

58

32

112

8

14}

69

27}

98

r

YII

7

48

67i

35

146

4

47

65

30

138

2

7

38

23

72}

1

4

37

22

75

s

VIII

3

49

66

37

139

3

43}

60

33

112

2

8}

64

28}

82.}

t

„

1

32

62J

36

160

2

65

62

38}

164

u

IX

3

47i

67

35

143

2

27}

62

86}

160

3

13

62}

24}

74}

V

„

3

45i

65i

34J

136J

3

87}

66}

34

107}

3

12

56

26}

79}

w

„

2

41

67

36}

134

X

"

1

49

63}

36

131

u

2

»»

2

47

65

35}

124

aa

„

2

68

65J;

36

180}

2

75

61

36

112

lib

„

13

m

64*

36i

129

3

42}

62}

88

141}

2

9}

49

27}

54}

ec

8

63

681

37

141}

2

52

62}

29}

96

2

11*

56.^

27J

72}

dd

X

1

18

63

81

103

ee

„

8

S7i

67i

32}

148}

3

27

63

81}

117

2

14}

69}

26}

82

I

XI

3

25

64

35

135

3

34

64}

36

147}

1

12

66}

26}

64

1

14

57

30

77

W

„

15

45J

66

37}

153}

4

35

61

36

161

hh

)»

4

32

65i

32}

180}

2

34

61}

33}

143

il

II

3

83J

69}

37

165}

3

m

61}

35|

161

3

11

6i

23§

82

Jck

XI

2

56

65

35J

148

2

27}

63

803

116}

2

8}

48}

24

68

h and j/— No full-blood blacks here.

9J.

THE ABORiaiNES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

TABLE II.— HALF-CASTE BLACKS.

2

MEX.

WOMEiV.

BOYS.

GIELS.

1

3

4

5

6

7

3

4

5

6

7

3

4

5

6

7

3

4

S

6

7

a

I

3

33J

09i

35*

147J

3

31J- 62

33

135

3

6}

49}

24J

73}

b

II

1

20

72

38

138

2

22.1-

69

32}

117}

2

13

42}

22

47}

c

III

■

d

„

3

32

6SJ

36

148

3

23}

62

31

106

3

7}

51

22

54}

e

1

2

28

65i

35J

147i

f

IV

1

38

68

36

164

5

12:}

61

26J

83}

2

14}

69}

31}

99}

a

»>

2

43

69i

34

118

1

14

55

31

92

h

„

2

33

63i

36J

157

2

38i

64}

34}

146

3

10}

61}

24}

67}

i

V

2

28

C6J-

36i

155

1

32

63J

32

140

1

9

46

23

66

k

„

3

22

714

36

158

6

26

623

32g

124}

7

9}

39

22}

60}

5

111

625

25}

73

1

VI

3

22

661

35

147

3

23J

62

30J

103

3

11

52}

25}

69}

m

»

2

28

66;,

34

123J

1

30

63

33

101

2

12

69}

28}

73.}

n

„

1

25

65J

30

134

1

18

64

37

112

1

10

46

29

70

„

2

22

67-3

3:j

128

5

30}

64

32

125

1

8

50

26

53

2

6}

38

21

42}

1>

„

1

40

71

3SJ

156

2

24i

64}

33}

1171

1

11

62

26

65

„

2

27

691

36i

156J

3

26

69

34

120

3

91

50}

27}

59}

V

VII

s

VIII

4

43

68

47

157

t

„

5

25

69J

36;1

154

4

40i

64

47

144}

9}

62

24}

57

u

IX

3

45i

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144

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174

2

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633

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48

, 2, /t/i.— No half-castes here at present.

APPENDIX.

2.— STATURE.

Measurements of stature have also been got from each police district, but, as all of
these cannot be produced here, I give the return from Walgett as a sample. The black
letters on the margin below indicate the measurements, which are : —

2i— Ground to the calf of the lep (thickest part).

]i— Ground to the centre of the cap of the knee.

C — Ground to the forh.

d — Ground to the. umbilicus.

e — Ground to the chin.

f — Ground to the tips of the fingers, the hand hAac) placed against the thigh.

g — Length of the arm from the point of the shoulder to the elbow.

\ — Length of the arm from the elbow to the tips of the fingers.

FULL-BLOOD BLACKS.

HALF-CASTE BLACKS.

Three Men.

Three Women. Three Boya.*

Three Men.

Three Women.

Thi

ee Boys.^=

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

in.

a

15i

16.i

14}

14J

14

19

6i

8

14J

13J

m

14

161

15

143

141

10

91

1)

20J

22

20

18J

19

20i

8

Hi

17J

m

21

2H

m

IVi

19i

171

14

123

c

321

33i

32

29J

SO

32J

Hi

17J

28

31J-

34

32i

33

31J

323

27

23

20

d

42J

43

40J

35i

36

41 16

21i

36

41

44

42J

37i

37i

381

341

28

25

e

61

60i

58

63i

55J

58 24i

32

46J

57

62i

58J

53i

541

56i

45

40i

36

f

25i

23J

26

24i

24*

25

9J

13i

2U

25

25J

26

25J

23

24

20J

161

15

g

15i

15

13J

l*i

13J

131

6i

8

123

12J

14

13i

133

12i

"1

121

10

9

h

19

19|

18* 18

16J

17.1

8

lOJ

16i

ISi

20:f

19

16i

163

17i

163

131

11.3

* The ages of the boys are not given.

3.— THE NUMBEE OE THE ABORIGINES IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

(CENsrs 1891.)

Under
16 years.

16 years
and under
21 years.

21 years
and over.

Total.

Full-Wood—

615
492

723
704

223
169

169
159

2,168
1,540

771
657

2,896
2,201

1,663
1,620

Females

Half-castes—

Males

Females

Total—

Males . . . .

1,238
1,106

392
328

2,929
2,197

4 559

3,721

Note.— The ages of the Aborigines are estimated approximately.

96 THE ABOEIGIiXES OF KEW SOUTH WALES.

4.— CEANIOMETET.

Abstract Eejoort on the Craniology of Australian Aborigines,

With table of measurements,

By J. T. AVilson, IM.B. (Edin.) ; Professor of Anatomy, University of Sydney;

Formerly Demonstrator of Anatomy, University of Edinburgh.

It is proposed in this appendix to give a short abstract or summary of some of the
characters of the skulls of Australian aborigines.

In illustration of some of the features referred to, there is added a table of measure-
ments made by the reporter on a series of six crania. It would be idle to frame definite
conclusions upon the results of an examination of any small number of skulls, and the
table is not introduced here for anysuch purpose, but it will be found to be, on the whole,
in accordance with the observations of other investigators.

The skulls measured were taken from the collection in the Australian Museum, and
the Trustees of that institution Iiaving kindly placed their craniological series at his
disposal, the reporter hopes in course of time to publish an extended series of observations
and measurements, from which it may be po.ssible to deduce more or less reliable averages
and conclusions, capable of being brought into line with those already published by
various eminent craniologists,

In the meantime a few of the chief references to the scientific literature of the
craniology of Australian aborigines may be here indicated.

MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy, in their great work " Crania Ethnica,'' have given the
results of a detailed examination by themselves of thirty-eight skulls, and they deal with
data from other sources, making up the number of crania referred to to eighty-two.

Professor Flower, in his lecture on the "Native Races of the Pacific Ocean" (Proc.
Roy. Inst, of Great Britain, 31st May, 1878), and in the "Catalogue of the Osteological
Specimens" in the Museum of the Pvoy. Coll. of Surg., Eng. (Pt. I, 1879), has stated the
results of the study of fifty-four Australian crania.

Professor Sir William Turner, in his Report on the Human Crania collected by
the "Challenger" expedition ("Challenger" Reports, Vol. X, Pt. XXIX), publishes his own
observations upon forty-four skulls, and collates his results with those obtained by the
investigations of De Quatrefages and Hamy, Flower, and others. He thus obtains data
collected from a series of one hundred and fifty crania, both from the littoral and the
interior ; the exact localities of collection being known in one hundred and twenty-nine
cases, and scattered over almost the entire extent of the island-continent.

For a further bibliography on the subject the reader may be referred to the memoirs
just quoted, and to a catalogue of the literature ))earing on Australian aborigines generally,
by R. Etheridge, junr., published by the Department of Mines of the Government of
New South Wales.

The following general account is partly based upon the general summary and analysis
of his own observations and those of his predecessors, embodied by Turner in the
" Challenger" Report referred to. It has been composed, however, in full view of certain
typical and selected specimens at the disposal of the reporter, who has throughout sought
rather to bring the characteristic features into due prominence than to aim at even
moderate completeness in this descriptive abstract.

As in other races, the distinctive characters of the Australian skull are most accentu-
ated in the male sex and in adult age, and it has been that form of skull which has been
more especially in view in the compilation of this sketch.

The very low cubic capacity of the Australian cranium is one of its most typical
features. The mean of 30 skulls is given by Turner as l,2:-i0 cub. centimetres, ranging
from 1,514 c.c. in the highest male to 930 c.c. in the lowest female. De Quatrefages and
Hamy gave 1,269 c.c. ; Flower gives 1,298 c.c. The average of the six skulls included in
the subjoined table (four male and two female) is 1 ,299 c.c. Topinard quotes from Broca
a male average of 1,347 c.c, and a female average of 1,181 c.c.

The mean of both sexes is microcephalic {i.e., below 1,350 c.c.) Indeed, according to
Turner, only about 25 per cent, of the male crania exceed the upper limit of microcephaly.

On the other hand, the adult male skull tends to be massive and weighty. Turner
mentions one skull which weighed, with the mandible, 2 lb. GJ oz. avoir., or 1,100
grammes ; while one of the six skulls examined in connection with this report weighed,
with the mandible, 1,084 grammes.

Some special features in the configuration of tlie skull are fairly characteristic, if not
severally, at any rate in correlation. The dimensional characters will be alluded to later
on, but a few others deserve notice. Thus, a very large proportion of Australian skulls
exhibit a marked ridging or antero-posterior elevation of the vertex. This is accompanied

APPENDIX. 97

by, and partly due to, a flattening of the cranial vault on either side as far as the region
of the parietal eminences, giving a somewhat roof-like shape to the top of the skull.
When viewed from behind, this is seen to throw the parietal bosses into relief, and thus
to exaggerate the generally pentagonal outline of that aspect of the skull as a whole.

From above, in the norma verlicalis, the zygomatic arches are usually apparent, and in
some male skulls (as in No. 5 in table) are exceedingly prominent indeed. The elongated,
almost scapho-cephalic, character of some skulls is also very striking from this point of
view.

Viewed from the side in the norma lateralis, the frontal depression or backward slope
of the forehead is seen to be considerable, so that the frontal angle is a low one. The
sexual difference is, as is visual with this character, in favour of the female. The average
frontal angle in' the six cases tabulated below (male and female) was 66° 25'. This
low angle is doubtless in part due to the extraordinary apparent prominence of the glabella
in most of the adult male skulls, but the appearance of the latter feature is really to some
extent exaggerated by the counter-sinking of the frontonasal suture, which is also
characteristically extreme in such cases.

The several degrees of facial, anterior cranial and posterior cranial projection as
ascertained by Topinard's craniophore may be conveniently expressed, after Broca, in
relation to the total antero-posterior projection of the cranium taken as = 1,000.

With the six skulls tabulated below, the average projection of the face was 69 '41 ; of the
anterior cranium, exclusive of the face, 441 '53 ; and of the posterior cranium, 489 "Oi. Broca
states the proportions for Europeans as follows : — Projection of face, 64 '8 ; anterior
cranium, 409'9; posterior cranium, 525'2; and for negroes thus: — Projection of face,
137 '5; anterior cranium, 361 '0; posterior cranium, 501 '3. Hence the posterior cranial
projection is proportionally less, and the anterior cranial projection greater, than in
either negroes or Europeans, from which facts it may possibly be concluded that the
foramen magnum is placed considerably further back than in either of the races mentioned.
The individual variations in the proportions of these projections are, however, too great,
and the series examined too small, to yield any but inconclusive evidence. It may,
however, be noted that in no case did the facial projection approach at all near to that
given as the negro average by Broca. In only one case did the posterior cranial
projection reach the negro average, and indeed the limits of variation of this factor were
narrow.
The average of the basilar index (Broca) was 50'9, i.e., the upper mesoseme limit.
Each of the six skulls, when placed — minus the mandible — upon the table, rests
posteriorly upon the conceptacular region. One rests, in addition, upon the tips of the
mastoids, and one on the condyles ; thus they all illustrate the bulging down of the
occipital bone which Turner has noticed.

The cranial sutures, especially the sagittal and coronal, tend towards simplicity of type,
and early synostosis is frequent. The lambdoidal and occipito-mastoid, however, are very
commonly complicated and beset with a number of wormian bones, frequently of large
size. Epipterio bones are common at the pterion, which not seldom exhibits other forms
of departure from the ordinary H -shaped type.

The area of the temporal fossa is extensive, sometimes reaching up to, or even beyond,
the middle of the parietal eminences.

In the norma facialia the prominence of the superciliary ridges may be noted, but more
remarkable is the massive development of the orbital arches, especially towards their
outer ends, where they frequently jut out laterally to a striking degree beyond the limits
of the rather narrow inferior frontal diameter.

The rounded-off character of the outer orbital margins is noticed by Turner, as also a
comparable rounding off of the inferior boundary of the anterior narial apertures, so that
the floor of the nose is often almost continuous with the slope of the prognathous alveolar
margins of the maxillae. These were noteworthy characters in several of the crania
under notice.

The estimation of the dimensional characters is best effected by a study of the various
indices, which are usually calculated from the actual measurements. The subjoined table
contains the details both of the measurements themselves and of the indices.

The cephalic or length-breadth index appears from the results of the various observers
to be about 71, i.e., markedly dolicho-cephalic. Turner's average figures are 69 for males
and 72 for females. Flower's average is slightly higher, but, as the former points out,
the difference is probably due to the use by the latter of the ophryo-occipital diameter.
In the table the glabello-occipital has been used (after Broca, Turner, and others), and
the average obtained for the six crania is 70 '07.

The vertical or length-height index is on the average about the same as the cephalic, or
a little higher, e.g., De Quatrefages and Hamy give 71 '5 for the cephalic and 717 for the
vertical as their averages.

98 THE ABOEIG-mES OE NBW SOUTH WALES.

It has been alleged that the vertical falls below the cephalic index in a much greater
proportion of skulls from the southern portion of the Australian continent than from the
more northern, and this is adduced as evidence in favour of the hyphothesis — advocated
also on other grounds by Topinard and others— of a dual origin for the Australian black
races. Turner has examined the evidence from crauiologicaldata available up to tlie date
of his work, and finds it inconclusive.

The gnathic index of Turner (' alveolar,' of Flower) expressing the relative proportions
of the basi-nasal and basi-alveolar lengths, and, ostensibly, the degree of "prognathism,"
does not yield a numerical factor at all constant in the Australian races. Not only is
there a wide range of individual variation, but the sexual indications of the character
are non-reliable.

On the whole, the facial prognatliism indicated, according to Flower, by indicial
numbers above 103 is very inconstant in Australians, and Turner's average was below
103, i.e., mesognathous, while various individuals were facially orthognathic. In the
six skulls illustrative of this report the average gnathic index was 97 '8, which would just
place these skulls in the orthognathic category of Flower. The edentulous condition of
No. 3, and the loss of both median incisors in No. 4, may partially account for the low
average, but of the others only one attained a number over 103, so as just to class it,
according to Flower, as prognathous. Turner's mean from his considerable series was
100-6.

The facial angle nearly corresponding to this index, i.e. , the ophryo-alveolo-condylar,
obtained by the method of projections, was, in the series here dealt with, 80° 56', which
is less prognathic in this sense than in most races.

Topinard, whose method was followed in determining the above angle, criticises
adversely (Anthropology, Trans, by Bartley, Load., 1890) the value of the estimation
of facial prognathism in the above sense as affording a character of racial importance.
It is quite otherwise with the projection of the maxilla below the subnasal point, i.e.,
alveolo-subnasal, or "true " prognathism. According to Topinard, this is a character of
genuine racial importance. In the Australian race he states the average of the angle of
this species of prognathism as 68" 24', and, judged by this criterion, Australians are among
the most prognathous of the races of men. The average angle in the six skulls tabulated
below was only 66° 44', the highest being 73° and the lowest 59°.

Co-related with the low gnathic indices in the table may be mentioned the high
palato-maxillary indicial figures. The connection between these factors has been pointed
out by Turner. That tliis concomitant variation is not merely due to the greater or less
extension of the alveolar arch is proved by the very considerable degree of alveolo-
subnasal prognathism which here co-exists with the high palato-maxillary indices. The
highest index, i.e., 142'6, in No. 4, was doubtless associated with absorption of the
incisor sockets, wliile the molars were large and well developed. On the other hand, the
lowest index, in No. 3, was in a quite edentulous skull. The latter was the only skull
which was not brachy-uranio, although in several the alveolar arch had undergone no
absorption whatever. Turner's average is 109, i.e., dolicho-uranic. The palato-maxillary
dimensions were carefully taken after Turner's directions.

The mean narial (nasal) index given in the table nearly corresponds with that given by
de Quatrefages and Hamy (57'9), and by Flower (56 '9). Turner's average was only 53-5,
owing to the presence in his series of several skulls with exceptionally low indices. One
in particular — a genuine Australian — was actually leptorhine, with an index of only 46.

'The mean orbital index in the table corresponds exactly with that found by Turner,
which was considerably higher than either Flower's or that of de Quatrefages and
Hamy.

The measurement of the cubic capacity was taken after Turner's modification of
Broca's method with No. 4 chilled shot, the measurements in each case being several
times repeated. The dimensions, unless other^vise noted, were taken according to Broca's
directions in his "Instructions Craniologiques et Craniomitriques," Paris, 1875.

APPENDIX.

99

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INDEX.

101

INDEX.

A

Abortion .... . 4

Adornment, personal 46

Adze 72

AfEection, mutual - - - - 35

„ natural • 5

Amusements 63, 66

Axe, stone - - 76

B

Balls, native 65

Betrothal 26

Bii-th 2

Bora, the - 6, 11

Analogies —

African - - - - - 6

Kaffir 7

Fijian 8

Indian 10

Brands, personal - 45

Bumarang, the 69

Burial 82

„ modes of - - • 80

c

Camp, order of 69

CannibaUsm - • 3, 56

Child, the 4

Chisel - - 77

Classes, animal 34

„ names of tribal • - . - - 33

Clothing (See under Adornment) - - 46

Clubs 73

Cooking 55

Corrobboree, the (See Karabari) - - 21

Cromlechs - - - 68

Daily life
Death, at - -
„ causes of
Decamp
Descent, law of
Diseases
Dogs ....
Dwellings -

E

- 58

- 79
78,85

- 84
32
62

- 55

- 48

Education
Exogamy

Fire-making
Pood- - - -

,, restriction of
See also Messengers
Freemasonry ■ -
Funeral, the - -
„ analogies

H

30

■ 57

- 43

- 53

42

- 24
84
86

Gesture language-

24, 67

Ghost (spirit), the

- - - 83

Government, tribal -

- - 38

Grave, the - - -

.... 81

Hooks -
Hunting

Implements
Industrial -
Inheritance

78
54

76
69
35

£

Karabari, the
Kindness - - -
Knives (See Adze)

21, 64, I

Life, daily

5

77

58

102

THE ABOEIG-INES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

M

Manly amiisemen's

Marriage

„ ceremony
,, classes
,, fidelity -

Message sticks - -

Messengers, public

Migrations -

MotIier-in-laiv - -

Mourning

N

Warning

..Nets - - -
Numeration, native

Ornaments, personal -

P

Parturition -
Punisbments -

a

Quarrels

E

Eestriction of food (See rood)
Revenge

3

39

39

53
86

s

66

Shelters - - -

- 4S

27

Shields -

75

- 29

Signals

- 67

32

Songs - -

64

34

Spears -

71

67

Spirits of man, two - -

85

- 41

Stone axe

- 76

38

Successor to chief

- 38

29

87

T

Temperament

43

4

Totems {See undei' Messengers)

- 41

78

Trading - - - -

37,67

25

Travellers

- 37

Tribal classes, names of -

- - 33

, , government

- 38

Tribe, the ; what is it ? - - ,-

36

„ boundaries of

- -.37

45

Tribule, the

■■ 3G

u

Utensils

Visitij

w

Weapons, native
Worship, astral

-77

37

69
22

Sydney : Charles Potter, Government Printer.— 1892.

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PLAN OF BORA GROUND NEAR GLOUCESTER, N.S.W.

CARVINGS ON TREES AROUND THE UPPER BORA CIRCLE

PHOTO-LiTHOGRAPHED^vT THE GOVT; PRINTING OFFICE.
SYCNey, NEW -SOUTH WALES,

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