AN OLD MAN FROM HERBERT RIVER.
The race must be characterised as ugly-looking, though the expression of the countenance is not, as a rule, disagreeable, especially when their attention is awakened. Occasionally handsome individuals may be found, particularly among the men, who as a rule are better shaped than the women. The latter have more slender limbs; the abdomen is prominent, and they have hanging breasts, mainly the result of hard work, unhealthy vegetable food, and early marriage. I have on two occasions seen what might be called beauties among the women of Western Queensland. Their hands were small, their feet neat and well shaped, with so high an instep that one asked oneself involuntarily where in the world they had acquired this aristocratic mark of beauty. Their figure was above criticism, and their skin, as is usually the case among the young women, was as soft as velvet. When these black daughters of Eve smiled and showed their beautiful white teeth, and when their eyes peeped coquettishly from beneath the curly hair which hung in quite the modern fashion down over their foreheads, it is not difficult to understand that even here women are not quite deprived of that influence ascribed by Goethe to the fair sex generally. On the Herbert river I never saw a beautiful girl, but about seventy miles west from there, on the table-land, I met a young woman who had a good figure and a remarkably symmetrical face, beautiful eyes, and a well-shaped nose, the lower part of which was narrower than is usual, and consequently the triangular form was less conspicuous. I must confess, however, that I have never seen uglier specimens of human beings than the old women are as they sit crouching round the fire scratching their lean limbs. They have hardly any muscles left. Their abdomen is large, the skin wrinkled, the hair gray and thin, and the face most repulsive, especially as the eyes are hardly visible. The women fade early, and on account of the hard life they live do not attain the age of the men, the latter living a little more than fifty years. It has been thought that the men in some parts of the interior of Queensland attain an age of even seventy to eighty years, but in the northernmost part of the country few are said to live more than forty years. On Herbert river the women are more numerous than the men; this is also the case among the tribes south-west of the Carpentarian Gulf and elsewhere. But according to accurate observations the opposite is the case in a large part of Australia. The women bear their first children at the age of eighteen to twenty years, sometimes later, and seldom have more than three or four. Twins are very rare.
A GROUP OF NATIVES FROM HERBERT RIVER.
The birth of a child does not seem to give the mother much trouble. She goes a short distance from the camp, together with an old woman, and when the interesting event has taken place and the child has been washed in the brook, she returns as if nothing had happened, and no one takes the slightest notice of the occurrence. For a long time afterwards she must keep away from her husband. A woman is proud of being with child, and I am able to state as a curiosity that the tribes around the Carpentarian Gulf think they are able to predict the sex of the babe a few months before birth by counting the number of rings on the papillæ mammæ of the mother.
On account of the unhealthy food of the blacks the children are weaned late, and it even happens that a child is nursed at its mother’s breast with the next older brother or sister.
Instances of death from childbearing are very rare. The advent of a baby is not always regarded with favour, and infanticide is therefore common in Australia, especially when there is a scarcity of food, as under such circumstances they even eat the child. In their nomadic life children are a burden to them, and the men particularly do not like to see the women, who work hard and procure much food, troubled with many children. In some parts of Australia the papillæ mammæ are cut off to hinder the women from nursing children.
A YOUNG BOY FROM HERBERT RIVER, SHOWING ORNAMENTAL SCARS.
The strong smell of the blacks is quite different from that of an unclean white man. Nor can it be doubted that the blacks have a peculiar smell which disturbs cattle, dogs, and horses when they approach the natives, even if the latter are not seen; this, no doubt, has frequently saved the lives of travellers. This strong odour, moreover, is mixed with the smell of dirt, smoke, paint, and other things with which they constantly smear themselves.