[30] See Account of the Effects of a Storm at Mount Macedon, (Mitchell’s “Three Expeditions,” vol. ii. p. 283.)
[31] On one occasion the progress of the fire was against the wind. See this stated and explained by Major Mitchell, “Three Expeditions,” vol. i. p. 19.
[32] See Oxley’s Journals, pp. 184-7.
[33] Not quite so; they soon fell in with a few of the scattered wanderers of the bush.
[34] See the interesting account of Major Mitchell’s ascent to Mount William, the highest point of these hills.—Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. ii. pp. 171-181.
[35] Psalm cxxii. 8,9.
[36] One crime, in which the inhabitants of the neighbouring islands of New Zealand notoriously indulge, has been charged also upon the people of New Holland; but, since no mention of their cannibalism is made by those British travellers who have seen most of the habits of the natives, it is hoped that the charge is an unfounded one. See, however, M. Martin’s New South Wales, pp. 151-2, and the instance of Gome Boak, in Collins’ History of New South Wales, p. 285; and Sturt’s Expeditions in Australia, vol. ii. p. 222.
[37] Nay, our fellow-countrymen in the Australian colonies, can, by no means, endure a strict trial, even by their own rule of right. Take, for instance, the following very common case:—The kangaroo disappears from cattle-runs, and is also killed by stockmen, merely for the sake of the skin; but no mercy is shown to the natives who may help themselves to a bullock or a sheep. They do not, it is true, breed and feed the kangaroos as our people rear and fatten cattle, but, at least, the wild animals are bred and fed upon their land, and consequently belong to them.
[38] Speaking of a tribe which he found upon the banks of the Darling, Mitchell says, “The men retained all their front teeth, and had no scarifications on their bodies, two most unfashionable peculiarities among the aborigines.” (Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. i. p. 261.) The same intelligent traveller accounts for the custom of knocking out the teeth, by supposing it a typical sacrifice, probably derived from early sacrificial rites. The cutting off the last joint of the little finger of females, (he adds,) seems a custom of the same kind. It is a curious observation, that the more ferocious among the natives on the Darling were those tribes that had not lost their front teeth.—Vol. ii. p. 345, and vol. i. p. 304.
[39] This was not the fact, however, for Lieut. Collins found them in a different place, when he went to the spot early in the next morning.