Finally I succeeded in inducing Mangola-Maggi to fetch the head; but the skull he brought me belonged to a young person and not to a full-grown man. Besides, there was a large hole in the top of it, which made it much less desirable as a cranium. I asked him what had produced the hole. “Dingo has eaten it,” he said. Though I insisted that this could not be true, he kept asserting that it was the right head. As, however, he got no tobacco and as I promised him a large amount if he would bring the right one, he set out again in company with another native. After he had gone, the blacks explained to me the facts concerning this skull. Mangola-Maggi as a young man had experienced great difficulty in getting a wife, and had therefore requested an old man to give him one of his. But, as was natural, the old man refused to do this. Mangola-Maggi, who was a person of high authority on account of his ability to secure human flesh, became angry, and decided to take revenge. On meeting the young son of the man, he struck him on the head with a stone and killed him, and it was the skull of this young man that they had now brought to me and were trying to get a reward for. The body he had eaten immediately after the murder.
The next day Mangola-Maggi and his companion brought the right cranium and got their reward. When I reproached Mangola-Maggi for his conduct toward the old man’s son, he simply shrugged his shoulders and smiled. I afterwards learned that he was challenged by the father to a duel with wooden swords and shields, and that in this manner the whole affair was settled.
A MALE CRANIUM FROM ROCKHAMPTON, CENTRAL QUEENSLAND, SEEN FROM FIVE SIDES.
It is a well-known fact that the Australian natives, according to Gustaf Retzius, belong to the prognathous dolichocephalous class. Their projecting jaws make them resemble the apes more than any other race, and their foreheads are as a rule very low and receding. The bone is thick and strong. Few crania are to be found without marks of injuries, whether they be male or female. The muscles of the face, particularly the masticatory muscles, are very fully developed; the superciliary arches are very prominent; the cheek-bones are high, and the temporal fossæ very deep. The skull-bones form a high arch. The orbital margin is very thick, the nasal bones are flat and broad, and the teeth large and strong, the inner molars having as many as six cusps. The hollow of the neck takes an upward and receding direction.
In the eight crania brought by me from Central and Northern Queensland the length-breadth index is 71, the length averages 180.5, and the breadth 128. The dolichocephalous character of the skull is mainly owing to the great narrowness of the cranium.
The facial angle averages 68°. Index orbitalis is microseme (81.5), index nasalis is platyrhine (53), and Daubenton’s angle averages 5°.
The male crania have the savage type even to a greater degree than the female.
The above measurements, particularly the small capacity of the cranium, and the low receding forehead, which is unfavourable to a development of the frontal lobes, indicate the low plane of intellectual development of the Australian natives. The smaller the skull is the lower the race ranks in culture, but the organs of the face are all the more developed in comparison with the rest of the head.
The features distinguishing the cranium of the Australian from that of the European are, in the first place, the projecting jaws (the prognathous character), which are very rare and never marked among Europeans; in the second place, the low forehead and the small capacity, which among Europeans would be called microcephalous, and would indicate a weak mind; in the third place, the flat nose, which is also very rare in Europe; and finally, the large Daubenton angle.