I was never fortunate enough to succeed in obtaining a friendly interview with the natives of these parts; but I have repeatedly seen them closely, was twice forced into dispute with them and, in one of these instances, into deadly conflict. My knowledge of them 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 ordinary implements, and I took some pains to study their disposition and habits as far as I could.
In their manner of life, their roving habits, 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 the 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 headquarters, where the women and children remain whilst the men, divided into small parties, hunt and shoot in different directions. The largest number we saw together amounted to nearly two hundred, women and children included.
THEIR WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS.
Their arms consist of stone-headed spears (which they throw with great strength and precision) of throwing sticks, boomerangs or kileys, clubs, and stone hatchets. The dogs they use in hunting I have already stated to be of a kind unknown in other parts of Australia, and they were never seen wild by us.
The natives manufacture their water-buckets and weapons very neatly; and make from the bark of a tree a light but strong cord. Their huts, of which I only saw those on the sea-coast, are constructed in an oval form of the boughs of trees, and are roofed with dry reeds. The diameter of one which I measured was about fourteen feet at the base.
LANGUAGE.
Their language is soft and melodious, so much so as to lead to the inference that it differs very materially, if not radically, from the more southern Australian dialects which I have since had an opportunity of enquiring into. Their gesticulation is expressive, and their bearing manly and noble. They never speared a horse or sheep belonging to us and, judging by the degree of industry shown in the execution of some of their paintings, the absence of anything offensive in the subjects delineated, and the careful finish of some articles of common use, I should infer that under proper treatment they might easily be raised very considerably in the scale of civilization.
INDIVIDUALS OF AN ALIEN WHITE RACE.