(1.) MINTALTA, A NAUO MAN.
(See [page 764].)
(2.) YOUNG MAN AND BOY. (South Australia.)
(See page 771.)
(3.) SMALL STONE HUT FOR CURE OF DISEASE.
(See p. 771.)
(4.) TOMB OF SKULLS. (Cape York.)
(See page 773.)
The [illustration No. 1], on page 765, is given in order to show the curious appearance which is sometimes presented by the men when they have successfully passed through their various ordeals. The name of the man was Mintalta, and he belonged to the Nauo tribe, which lives near Coffin’s Bay. In his hand he holds the waddy, and, by way of apron, he wears a bunch of emu feathers. Across his breast are seen the bold ridges which mark his rank as a man, and others are seen upon his arms. His beard is gathered into a long pointed tuft, and decorated with a little bunch of white cockatoo feathers at the tip. In his hair he wears two curious ornaments. These are not feather plumes, as they seem to be in the illustration, but are simply slender sticks of white wood, scraped so as to let the shavings adhere by one end. Indeed, they are made exactly like those little wooden brooms that are sometimes hawked by German girls about the streets, or, to use a more familiar simile, like the curly-branched trees in children’s toy-boxes.
Many of the particulars which have been and will be related of the domestic life of the Australians were obtained in a very curious manner. In the autumn of 1849 some persons belonging to H.M.S. Rattlesnake were out shooting, when they came across a native woman, or gin, dressed rather better than the generality of native women, as she wore a narrow apron of leaves. To their astonishment, the supposed gin addressed them in English, saying that she was a white woman, and desired their help. They immediately furnished her with some clothing, and brought her on board the Rattlesnake, where she contrived to make known her sad story. Her name was Thomson, and she was the widow of the owner of a small vessel. Cruising one day in search of a wreck, the pilot missed his way, a gale of wind came on, and the vessel was dashed on a reef on the Eastern Prince of Wales Island. The men tried to swim on shore through the surf, but were drowned, while the woman was saved by a party of natives, who came on board the wreck after the gale had subsided, and took her ashore.
The tribe into whose hands she had fallen was the Kowrárega, which inhabits Muralug, on the Western Prince of Wales Island. When she got ashore, one of the principal men, who fully held the popular idea that the white men are the ghosts of dead natives, recognized in Mrs. Thomson a daughter named Gi’ôm, who had long ago died. He accordingly took her home as his daughter, she was acknowledged by the tribe as one of themselves, and was forced to become the wife of one of the natives, called Boroto.