After mentioning several kinds of kangaroos, opossums, native dogs, etc., the former of which animals are constantly hunted down by the natives, Grey, speaking of the birds, says:—
"To describe the birds common to these parts requires more time than to detail the names of the few quadrupeds to be found. Indeed, in no other country that I have ever visited do birds so abound. Even the virgin forests of America cannot, in my belief, boast of such numerous feathered denizens. . . . The birds of this country possess, in many instances, an excessively beautiful plumage, and he alone who has traversed these wild and romantic regions, who has beheld a flock of many-coloured parrakeets sweeping like a moving rainbow through the air, can form any adequate idea of the scenes that then burst on the eye of the wondering naturalist. As to fish, the rivers abound in many species of excellent fish."
Could there be a more fitting description of that country which De Gonneville and his companions explored along the coast and in the interior to a distance of two days' journey, which "they found very fertile and full of many birds, beasts, and fish hitherto unknown in Christendom?" To what does this latter qualification apply? Certainly not to birds, beasts, or fish of either South America or Madagascar, as the American fauna was, to a certain extent, already known in Christendom, and that of Madagascar, which resembles that of the east coast of Africa, apart from a few species not particularly remarkable or numerous, was also well-known to Europeans. These beasts, of which, to use the old Norman phrase of "Master Nicole Le Fevre, avait pourtrayé les façons," must have struck him as very peculiar indeed when he refers to them as "utterly unknown in Christendom," and we know well that no other country can boast of a fauna so essentially different to that of any other part of the world as the Australian Continent.
And now as to the natives of this part of Australia, i.e., the neighbourhood of the Glenelg and Prince Regent's River. Grey, in page 251 of the above cited work, says:—
"My knowledge of the natives is chiefly drawn from what I have observed of their haunts, their painted caves, and drawings. I have, moreover, become acquainted with several of their weapons, some of their implements, and took pains to study their disposition and habits as far as I could.
"In their manner of life, their weapons, and mode of hunting, they closely resemble the other Australian tribes with which I have since become pretty intimately acquainted, WHILST IN THEIR FORM AND APPEARANCE THERE IS A STRIKING DIFFERENCE. They are, in general, very tall and robust, and exhibit in their legs and arms a fine, full development of muscle which is unknown to southern races. They wear no clothes, and their bodies are marked by scars and wales. They seem to have no regular mode of dressing their hair, this appearing to depend entirely on individual taste or caprice.
"THEY APPEAR TO LIVE IN TRIBES, SUBJECT, PERHAPS, TO SOME INDIVIDUAL
AUTHORITY, AND EACH TRIBE HAS A SORT OF CAPITAL OR HEAD-QUARTERS, WHERE
THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN REMAIN, WHILST THE MEN, DIVIDED INTO SMALL
PARTIES, HUNT AND SHOOT IN EVERY DIRECTION. The largest number we saw
together, including women and children, amounted to nearly two hundred.
"Their arms consist of stone-headed spears, of throwing-sticks, of boomerangs or kileys, clubs, and stone hatchets.
"These natives manufacture their water buckets and weapons very neatly, and make from the bark of a tree a light but strong cord.