PALM FOREST IN NORTHERN QUEENSLAND.
In the mountain scrubs there grows a very luxuriant kind of palm (Calamus australis), whose stem, of a finger’s thickness, like the East Indian Rotang-palm, creeps through the woods for hundreds of feet, twining round trees in its path, and at times forming so dense a wattle that it is impossible to get through it. The stem and leaves are studded with the sharpest thorns, which continually cling to you and draw blood, hence its not very polite name of lawyer-palm.
In the lower regions the common Australian palm and the fan-palm (Livistonia) are found. There is also the beautiful banana-palm, with its bright green, and towards the summit magnificent tree-ferns spread their splendid leaves over the rivers in the humid vales, blending with the endless mass of other trees and bushes. Rivers and streams everywhere tumble down the mountain sides, and frequently form beautiful waterfalls surrounded by luxuriant scrubs. Here, in the shadow of dense trees hiding the sun from sight, the water is cool and clear as crystal.
The real scrubs once left behind, and the summit reached, you come to a more open country, Leichhardt’s basaltic table-land. At first there are hills and dales with the same kind of scrubs as below, but not so dense, for the lawyer-palm is here more rare.
In these picturesque but very inaccessible scrubs the natives live in large numbers undisturbed by the white man, for there is no gold or other treasure to tempt him to subject himself to all the inconveniences connected with the effort to penetrate into these regions.
After having studied the neighbourhood of the station for some time, I soon discovered that I must abandon Herbert Vale as my night quarters and go farther up into the wild woods of the Coast Mountains, where there was much to entice me. Here I was to find the natives in their original condition, uninfluenced by intercourse with the white man. I had long desired to study these savages—the Australian aborigines, the lowest of the human race—in their actual conditions of existence; for the ethnological student no phase of human life is so interesting as the most primitive one. It also seemed clear at the outset that new species of animal life must be found there, and that I might secure them with the aid of the blacks. Having heard them speak of the two remarkable mammals, I resolved to do all in my power to get into these regions. But I could not think of going by myself; I needed help to carry my baggage, and not having any white servant, I was obliged to select black attendants, the only ones of course who could be of any real service to me in the scrubs. It would, moreover, be very difficult to find a capable white man willing to accompany me. In all probability he would not understand how to treat the savages, and this might soon result in death for both of us. It is difficult for a white man to find his way in these pathless regions; besides, it is not likely he would be able to trace the wild animals without the aid of the natives who have their hunting-grounds here. My only choice was to secure natives, and make them my friends and comrades, if I wished to attain my purpose; and so I resolved to live surrounded by them alone.
My first object was to find persons willing to go with me; no easy task, for the “civilised” natives on Herbert river were very lazy, and did not care to go up into these mountain regions; besides, they were but poorly acquainted with them. I therefore had to address myself to more remote tribes living nearer the regions which were my goal. From the civilised blacks I had become tolerably well acquainted with the natives. I knew a little of their language, and having had some experience of the manner in which to treat them in order to make them useful to me, I felt comparatively safe; but I must confess to considerable curiosity as to what the result would be.
It was a new experience to a white man this camping with Australian natives, who dwell in miserable huts made of leaves, who have no domestic animals, and are ignorant of agriculture, as well as savage and treacherous. A human life has so little value for them that they think no more of killing a man than we of breaking a glass; provided they feel sufficiently safe, they will kill a white man for a piece of tobacco or a shirt. But on picturing to myself the very interesting life in store for me, my doubts and hesitations were overcome. I was now to have a splendid opportunity of studying these natives. I was to be with them in sunshine and in rain in their own forests; to see them uninfluenced by any form of civilisation, and in their company to make many interesting discoveries and observations.
In the course of this and the following year I made many expeditions in company with the blacks. I began with the nearest tribes and worked my way up through these to the more remote ones, until at last I lived in huts with natives of Australia who never come into contact with the white man.