A number of natives were living in an improvised sort of settlement outside the town, and camped around the forest under low sheds of bark. At a little distance off Mr. Hill uttered a sharp, shrill whistle, which was immediately responded to from the forest. Presently two young natives made their appearance, and shook hands with Mr. Hill. An old man with grey hair remained cowering upon the ground without stirring. There were altogether four men, two women, and two children, all pretty well made, their skin of a black or dull brown hue, broad nostrils, and black crisp hair, which, however, had nothing woolly in its texture. One of the women carried a child, whose features and complexion were obviously the result of white parentage on one side. However, she did not seem, as is the case with other races that are proud of their colour, to be looked down upon on that account by her own race, who, so low is their standard of morality, rather consider it an honour for a black woman to bear a child to a white. Men and women alike showed on their skins the protuberant cicatrices of artificial incisions, two or three inches long, chiefly on the breast, arms, and back.
All the male natives with whom we conversed had had the upper central teeth knocked out, such being one distinguishing mark of their having attained the dignity of manhood!
The abundance of mustachio and beard of the Australian savages is a marked peculiarity, which none of their cognate races east or west have in common with them. We were also told that they value the beard as their highest ornament, and make it one of the great objects of their life to tend it. No man of their race dare marry or kill an emu till he can show a beard, to which also great virtue is attached in battle. None of these natives understand the use of the Boomerang.[16]
The natives around Port Jackson and in the Illawara district have, generally speaking, little of the aboriginal about them, and their abject misery and addiction to drink make them pitiable and disgusting objects; for their present hopeless state is in great measure attributable to their contact with civilization, which has made them neither intelligent nor industrious. The natives, however, of the banks of the Murray, Clarence, and Brisbane rivers, though of the same race, are of a very different appearance. They keep up the habits of their ancestors, and seldom come in contact with
civilization, and even then only with its pioneers, the squatters and shepherds. Among these the customs of circumcision and unlimited polygamy are universal, each man having as many wives as he can steal or support. Owing, however, to their nomad life, this system is practised to but a limited extent. Infanticide, especially of female children, is of very frequent occurrence. Abortion is also so frequently practised that they have a word (Mibra) to express it! On the other hand, we read in Count Strzelecki's valuable work that "the female natives after illicit commerce with a white man become barren for their own race," which, according to all unbiased observers, is a complete delusion.
In no part of Australia do the natives cultivate the soil. Nomad as is their mode of life, they live almost exclusively on the products of the chase, or of the deep, according as they live in the interior or on the coast. Lizards, snakes, and insects, and some few roots and resinous substances, form the delicacies of their primitive cookery.
Their dwellings are either natural cavities in the rock, or a few pieces of bark fixed into the ground at either end, and arched upwards in the middle. Throughout New South Wales the custom prevails, when a native dies young, of burying him under a shallow mound of earth, only the elders possessing the privilege of being consumed with fire. In the latter case the corpse of the deceased, with his hunting and fishing implements, is placed on a pile of dry wood about three feet high, with his face towards the rising sun. This is
covered by the surviving relatives with straw and wood, who then set fire to the funeral pyre. Some days later the ashes and calcined bones are collected and burnt. The name of the dead is never again pronounced, any individual of the same tribe, who may also happen to bear it, being compelled to exchange it for another.
The prevalence of cannibalism is a well-established fact among the natives of the north. M. Angas, amongst other interesting particulars, mentioned one case, where a boy died in the vicinity of Moreton Bay, whose head and skin, according to the savage habits of the natives, were separated from the rest of his body and dried over a fire. The father and mother were both present and uttered loud cries. The heart, liver, and entrails were divided among the warriors, who carried away with them pieces stuck on their bone-pointed spears; while the upper part of the thigh (apparently the tit-bit) was roasted and eaten by the parents themselves! The skin, the skull, and the bones were, on the other hand, carefully packed up and taken away with them in their grass sacks. It is not unusual for a mother to devour her own child, that she may thereby regain the strength which the fruit of her womb has abstracted from her! When a warrior of a hostile tribe falls into their hands they celebrate his sacrifice with savage glee, by rubbing their bodies with the fat around their victim's kidneys, by which means they believe they strengthen their muscles and inspire their hearts with courage. In the southern parts