The south and south-eastern extremes of Clack's Island presented a steep, rocky bluff, thinly covered with small trees. I ascended the steep head, which rose to an elevation of a hundred and eighty feet above the sea.
The remarkable structure of the geological features of this islet led me to examine the south-east part, which was the most exposed to the weather, and where the disposition of the strata was of course more plainly developed. The base is a coarse, granular, siliceous sandstone, in which large pebbles of quartz and jasper are imbedded: this stratum continues for sixteen to twenty feet above the water: for the next ten feet there is a horizontal stratum of black schistose rock which was of so soft a consistence that the weather had excavated several tiers of galleries; upon the roof and sides of which some curious drawings were observed, which deserve to be particularly described. They were executed on a ground of red ochre (rubbed on the black schistus) and were delineated by dots of a white argillaceous earth, which had been worked up into a paste. They represented tolerable figures of sharks, porpoises, turtles, lizards (of which I saw several small ones among the rocks) trepang, starfish, clubs, canoes, water gourds, and some quadrupeds, which were probably intended to represent kangaroos and dogs. The figures, besides being outlined by the dots, were decorated all over with the same pigment in dotted transverse belts. Tracing a gallery round to windward, it brought me to a commodious cave or recess, overhung by a portion of the schistus, sufficiently large to shelter twenty natives whose recent fire places appeared on the projecting area of the cave.
Many turtles' heads were placed on the shelves or niches of the excavation, amply demonstrative of the luxurious and profuse mode of life these outcasts of society had, at a period rather recently, followed. The roof and sides of this snug retreat were also entirely covered with the uncouth figures I have already described.
As this is the first specimen of Australian taste in the fine arts that we have detected in these voyages it became me to make a particular observation thereon: Captain Flinders had discovered figures on Chasm Island, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, formed with a burnt stick; but this performance, exceeding a hundred and fifty figures, which must have occupied much time, appears at least to be one step nearer refinement than those simply executed with a piece of charred wood. Immediately above this schistose is a superincumbent mass of sandstone which appeared to form the upper structure of the island.
(*Footnote. King's Australia volume 2 page 25.)
PAINTINGS IN THE YORK DISTRICT.
There is a third instance of a cave with a figure in it in the district of York, in the settlement of Swan River; but in this case the species of circle which is drawn on the cave, or rather scraped into it with a piece of stone, may represent anything or nothing; in fact it is no more than any idle or thoughtless savage might have executed, without any fixed design whatever. The only other vestige of drawing contained in the cave is evidently the mere impression of a hand, which has been rubbed over with the red paint with which the natives are in the constant habit of bedaubing themselves, and has then been pressed in on the wall.
NATIVE TRADITIONS.
I had been told that the natives had some very curious traditions current amongst them with regard to this last cave and, after having visited it and satisfied myself that there was no analogy between it and the caves on the north-west continent of Australia, I set about collecting some of the native stories that related to it. These legends nearly all agreed in one point, that originally the moon, who was a man, had lived there; but beyond this there was nothing common to them all, for every narrator indulged his own powers of invention to the greatest possible degree, scarcely ever relating the same story twice, but on each occasion inventing a new tradition; and the amount of marvels and wonders which he unfolded in this revelation were exactly proportioned to the quantity of food which I promised to give him. I once or twice charged them with attempting to impose upon my credulity and, far from denying the charge, they only laughed and said, "that was a very good thing which they told me, and that the Djanga (white men) liked it very much."