a, apparently represents a heart pierced in the center by a spear. The outline of the object representing the heart has been delineated with red ocher, whilst the spear has been drawn with a burnt stick or piece of coal. I have only seen this particular sketch in one instance, where four distinct drawings of the same object exactly below and equidistant from each other have been made in anything but a crude manner, the outline having been carefully and very distinctly traced on the rocks, showing a degree of perfection scarcely to be anticipated from these wild inhabitants. The breadth of the heart is about 5 inches and its length about 6 inches. The length of the spear portion is about 3 feet. [The device reminds of St. Valentine’s day.]
b, consists of two parallel lines about 6 inches apart, with regular marks between, and probably represents the native’s notion of a creek with emu tracks traversing its bed. This drawing has been made with a coal, and is found depicted on smooth rocks in various localities.
c, has been drawn both with coal and red ocher. It is found in many places, and seems to be a favorite drawing of the natives. I have found it depicted in several localities in the interior of Australia. It is generally supposed to represent a hand.
d. This figure is made by the natives in the following manner: Placing their extended hand against a smooth rock, after having previously moistened the same, they fill their mouths with powdered charcoal, which they then blow violently along the outline of their extended hand, thus leaving the portions of rock covered perfectly clean, whilst the space between their fingers and elsewhere around about becomes covered with the black substance. This drawing is not very common. I found several specimens near the Sabdover river. I have, however, been informed that it has been seen in other and distant parts of Australia.
Renan (a) says in the chapter on the Nomad Semites:
The real monuments of the period were, as in the case with all people who can not write, the stones which they reared, the columns erected in memory of some event, and upon which was often represented a hand, whence the name of iad [finger post].
Major Conder (c) writes that in Jerusalem a rough representation of a hand is marked by the native races on the wall of every house while building. Some authorities connect it with the five names of God, and it is generally considered to avert the evil eye. The Moors generally, and especially the Arabs in Kairwan, apply paintings of red hands above the doors and on the columns of their houses as talismans to drive away the envious. Similar hand prints are found in the ruins of El Baird near Petra. Some of the quaint symbolism connected with horns is supposed to originate from such hand marks. The same people make the gesture against the evil eye by extending the five fingers of the left hand.
H. Clay Trumbull (b) gives the following:
It is a noteworthy fact that among the Jews in Tunis, near the old Phenician settlement of Carthage, the sign of a bleeding hand is still an honored and a sacred symbol as if in recognition of the covenant-bond of their brotherhood and friendship. “What struck me most in all the houses,” says a traveler (Chevalier de Hesse-Wartegg) among these Jews, “was the impression of an open bleeding hand on every wall of each floor. However white the walls, this repulsive (yet suggestive) sign was to be seen everywhere.”
The following is extracted from Panjab Notes and Queries, Vol. I, No. 1 (October, 1883), p. 2: