CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE AUSTRALIAN RACE.
Physical Conformation of the Australians—Their Low State of Civilisation—Their Superstitions—Their Wars—Singing and Dancing—The Corribory—Division of the Nation into Great Families—Rules regulating the Property of Land and the Distribution of Food—Skill in Hunting the Kangaroo and the Opossum—Feasting on a Whale—Moral Qualities and Intelligence of the Australians.
On turning from the Malayan Archipelago and New Guinea, to the wilds of northern Australia, new aspects of savage life rise before our view. With new plants and new animals, a new variety of the human race makes its appearance, differing in figure, in physiognomy, in language, and in many of its customs and manners both from the Malay and the Papuan: a race which, though occupying one of the lowest grades in the scale of humanity, still offers many points of interest to the observer, and claims our attention both by its qualities and its defects.
The figure of the Australians is remarkable for spareness and lankness about the lower extremities, the hips and thighs as well as the calves of the legs, observable in the females as well as in the men. Their heads are in general large, with very projecting eyebrows and deep-set eyes, the nose broad, the mouth wide; and there is very often a ferocious look which is not in accordance with the character of the individual. The hair is often matted and twisted with filth and grease into different fashions; when clean, however, it is frequently as fine and glossy as that of the European. Its colour is in some of the children of a sunburnt brown, but invariably black among the adults. In their skins they vary from a dark chocolate-brown to an almost perfect black. Their hands and feet are usually small and well-shaped; the shoulders and chests of the men broad, and sufficiently muscular. Such is the physical character of the race from one end of the continent to the other, and though there are deviations from the usual slim and under-fed condition of the body, and from the usual straight character of the hair, the face, figure, and expression of an Australian is so peculiar as to distinguish him at once from the inhabitants even of the immediately adjacent islands.
In all the industrial arts these people are extremely deficient. They are utterly destitute of agriculture, and of all manufacture of any kind of material, or tool, or implement, beyond their few weapons and a rude stone hammer, and some simple nets and baskets. Over the largest part of the coast they were utterly ignorant of any kind of canoe until they were visited by Europeans; and where most advanced in navigation, knew no other method of crossing the water than in rude boats formed of a sheet of bark tied at the ends, or on rafts consisting of bundles of rushes or sticks. They have no huts worthy of the name, nor permanent habitations of any kind. Men and women are alike naked, except that in the southern parts of Australia they wear a kind of rug of opossum skins over their shoulders during the cold weather. Many tribes strike out one or two front teeth, and raise great scars and cicatrices on the skin. They also paint themselves with various colours, like most other savages, and sometimes also ornament themselves with beads and shells, but make no use of the beautiful feathers procurable from the birds of the country.
Their languages, although showing evident traces of a common origin, yet vary so much and so frequently that a native of one tribe can rarely understand the tongue of another fifty miles distant. Their religious notions are limited to a feeling of vague superstition. They are in great dread of an evil being whom they describe as going about under the form of a black man, of superhuman stature and strength. He prowls at night through the woods around the encampments of the natives, seeking to entrap some unwary wanderer, whom he will seize upon, and having dragged him to his fire, will there roast and devour him. He may, however, be frightened away, by throwing fire at him, and no native will go out at night without a firebrand to protect him from this demon.
They have also a superstitious horror of approaching the graves of the dead, of whom they never like to speak, and when induced to do so, always whisper.
The supposed powers of the Boylyas, or native sorcerers, have a mighty influence upon their minds and actions. It is supposed that these privileged personages can transport themselves through the air at pleasure, and render themselves invisible to all but other Boylyas. If they have a dislike to a native, they can kill him by stealing on him at night and consuming his flesh. Another Boylya has, however, the power of drawing them out, and curing the affected person by certain processes of disenchantment.
The absurd idea that no adult person dies a natural death reigns among the Australians as it does among many of the American, Malayan, and Negro tribes, and leads to the same baneful consequences. If a man perishes of disease his death is generally supposed to have been caused by some sorcerer of another tribe, and must be avenged on his murderer, or on some near relation of his.