No person can spend many days with the Australian natives before finding out that one of their chief traits is their never-ceasing begging. If you give one thing to a black man, he finds ten other things to ask for, and he is not ashamed to ask for all that you have, and more too. He is never satisfied. Gratitude does not exist in his breast, and friendship he is unable to appreciate. An Australian native can betray anybody, and confidence can rarely be placed in him. You should never let him walk behind you, but always in front. There is not one among them who will not lie if it is to his advantage. Though it is their nature to be lazy, and though they have no inclination whatever for work, yet they can on a hunt develop remarkable energy and endurance.
The women are the humble servants or rather slaves of the native. He does only what pleases himself, and leaves all work to his wives; therefore the more wives he has the richer he is.
The Australian aborigines do not cultivate the soil, and their only domestic animal is the dingo (dog). Living from hand to mouth on vegetables or animal flesh, they are constantly flitting from place to place to find their subsistence, and have no permanent abodes. Their character is like their mode of life; they are the children of the moment—capricious; a resolution is quickly formed and as quickly abandoned. They are humorous by nature, have a keen sense of what is comical, and a cheerful disposition; though free from care, they are never without a secret fear of being attacked by other tribes, for the tribes are each other’s mortal foes.
What they lack in personal courage they make up by craft and cunning. If they can kill their enemies by a treacherous attack, they do so without hesitation. The attacked party takes to flight, each one thinking of his own safety alone, for self-preservation is their only law.
The Australians are cannibals. A fallen foe, be it man, woman, or child, is eaten as the choicest delicacy; they know no greater luxury than the flesh of a black man. There are superstitious notions connected with cannibalism, and though they have no idols and no form of divine worship, they seem to fear an evil being who seeks to haunt them, but of whom their notions are very vague. Of a supreme good being they have no conception whatever, nor do they believe in any existence after death. Such are in brief the main characteristics of the Australian native as I came to know him on the Herbert river.
During my association with these savages I learned that on the summit of the Coast Mountains, before mentioned, there lived two varieties of mammals which seemed to me to be unknown to science; but I had much difficulty in acquiring this knowledge. One of the animals they called yarri. From their description I conceived it to be a marsupial tiger. It was said to be about the size of a dingo, though its legs were shorter and its tail long, and it was described by the blacks as being very savage. If pursued it climbed up the trees, where the natives did not dare follow it, and by gestures they explained to me how at such times it would growl and bite their hands. Rocky retreats were its most favourite habitat, and its principal food was said to be a little brown variety of wallaby common in Northern Queensland scrubs. Its flesh was not particularly appreciated by the blacks, and if they accidentally killed a yarri they gave it to their old women. In Western Queensland I heard much about an animal which seemed to me to be identical with the yarri here described, and a specimen was once nearly shot by an officer of the black police in the regions I was now visiting.
The other animal also lived in the trees, but fed exclusively on leaves. According to the statement of the blacks, it was a kangaroo which lived in the highest trees on the summit of the Coast Mountains. It had a very long tail, and was as large as a medium-sized dog, climbed the trees in the same manner as the natives themselves, and was called boongăry. I was sure that it could be none other than a tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus). Tree-kangaroos were known to exist in New Guinea, but none had yet been found on the Australian continent.
As is well known, the Great Dividing Range stretches along the coast of Australia at a distance of from fifty to some three hundred miles inland. This range forms in general the watershed between the eastern and western waters, but there are chains of mountains visible from the coast that are often of greater elevation than this range, such as the Blue Mountains, where the streams break through the mountain masses in picturesque chasms on their way to the Pacific. The Dividing Range is sometimes not easily traced, and the spurs coming from it, as well as detached mountains near the coast, are often much higher and are frequently taken for the main range. The whole body of mountains from south to north is spoken of as the Great Dividing Range, and forms, as it were, the Australian Cordilleras. On the extreme south-east the mountains attain an elevation of 5000 to 6000 feet; going north, they diminish rapidly and considerably. In the south part of Queensland they are low, but in Northern Queensland they again rise to a height of 2000 to 4000 feet (the Bellenden Kerr Hills are even 5400 feet high), then they once more diminish, and gradually disappear into the low-lying country of Cape York. The moist monsoons blow over these mountains and are converted into rain, which, together with the warm climate, produces a luxuriant tropical vegetation. Hence these mountains from base to top are extensively covered with scrubs.
On Herbert river and northward the Coast Mountains are difficult of access. Perpendicular chasms and tracts covered with loose stone abound; but wherever a root could take hold large trees and bushes have grown, while creeping and twining plants form a carpet on the ground. There are hilly but less stony parts, where the vegetation is so dense that a person can hardly penetrate it without being so torn and pricked that blood flows from the wounds.
