“We had here an instance of the capriciousness of the natives. We met about a dozen on shore, and endeavored by all friendly signs to induce them to come to terms with us. We showed them that we had no guns, but our attempts were useless. They fell into regular battle array, with their long spears ready shipped on the throwing sticks, six standing in front, and the rest acting as supports behind. As it was unsafe to parley longer, we mounted our horses, and again tried to make them understand that we wished to be on friendly terms. It was all useless, and the only thing that we could do was to ride straight at them. They ran like antelopes, and gained the thick bush where we could not follow them. B—— wanted to shoot one of them, but I would not allow it.
“The prospect of killing and eating our horses seemed to be their great temptation. They made constant war upon our stud for a fortnight or three weeks, in my camp at Depôt Creek, and I had to patrol the country with B—— daily, to keep them from ringing the horses round with fire.
“The character of the Australian canoe-men is variously spoken of, some reporting them as good-natured and peaceable, while others say that they are treacherous and savage. Both speak the truth from their own experience. A fellow artist, who generally landed from a man-of-war’s boat, with the ship in the offing, found them peaceable enough, but poor Mr. Strange, the naturalist, was murdered on one of the islands.
“While we were on board our vessels, they were quite friendly; and even during my boat’s voyage of 750 miles, while we had a dashing breeze and the boat well under command, we found the groups we met with civil enough. But when we were helplessly becalmed at the entrance of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and supposed by the natives to be the unarmed survivors of some vessel wrecked in Torres Straits, we were deliberately and treacherously attacked.
“We watched the preparations for nearly an hour through the telescope, and refrained from giving them the slightest ground even to suspect that we looked on them otherwise than as friends. As soon as they thought they had us in their power, they began to throw spears at us, so I put a rifle-bullet through the shoulder of the man who threw at us, to teach him the danger of interfering with supposed helpless boats, but did not fire again. The wounded man was led on shore by one of his mates, and we were not molested again.
“These people are very capricious. They have the cunning and the strong passions of men, but in reason they are only children. Life is not held sacred by them, and, when their thirst for blood is raised, they revel in cruelty.”
These Australian canoes, with outriggers attached, indicate a Polynesian origin, as indeed do the bows and arrows, which will be fully described on a future page. The tobacco pipes in use in that part of Australia are curious. One form consists of a hollow tube as thick as a man’s arm, stopped at the ends and having one hole near the bottom into which is introduced the stem of a pipe, and another hole near the top through which the smoke is imbibed. Their use of the pipe is rather singular. When a party desires to smoke, the chief man lights the pipe, places his mouth to the orifice, and continually inhales until the interior of the hollow stem is filled with smoke. The bowl is then removed, and the aperture stopped with a plug which is kept in readiness. The first smoker closes with his thumb the hole through which he has been imbibing the smoke, and passes the pipe to his neighbor, who applies his lips to the hole, fills his lungs with smoke, and then passes the pipe to the next man. In this way, the tobacco is made to last as long as possible, and the greatest possible amount of enjoyment is got out of the least possible amount of material. The exterior of the stem is generally carved into the simple patterns which are found on nearly all Australian weapons and implements.
Before proceeding further with the character and habits of the natives, we will cast a glance at the country which they inhabit, and the peculiarities which have contributed toward forming that character.
It is a very strange country, as strange to us as England would be to a savage Australian. Its vegetable and animal productions are most remarkable, and are so strange that when the earlier voyagers brought back accounts of their travels they were not believed; and when they exhibited specimens of the flora and fauna, they were accused of manufacturing them for the purpose of deception.
In the first place, with a single exception, the mammalia are all marsupials, or edentates. The solitary exception is the dingo, or native dog, an animal which somewhat resembles the jackal, but is altogether a handsomer animal. Whether it be indigenous, or a mere variety of the dog modified by long residence in the country, is rather doubtful, though the best zoölogists incline to the latter opinion, and say that the marsupial type alone is indigenous to this strange country. Of course the reader is supposed to know that the young of a marsupial animal is born at a very early age, and attains its full development in a supplementary pouch attached to the mother, into which pouch the teats open.