do paddles, swaying themselves in regular time, as if they were paddling in one of their light canoes.
These dances and these modes of decoration are unknown, as far as I am aware, to the natives of Victoria.
At a grand corrobboree as many as four hundred natives assemble; and, of course, it is necessary to provide food for these, and to maintain order. These matters are attended to by the council, composed of old men, who would suffer in the estimation of the warriors if they proved unequal to their responsibilities.
I have been careful to select descriptions of dances from the writings of trustworthy travellers; and to exhibit, as far as practicable, all the peculiarities which mark these highly original and dramatic entertainments. No one person—how extensive soever his experience might be—could gather all that is remarkable in such ceremonies. He might witness dances in all parts of Australia, and yet fail to note much that is important. It is only from the observations of many witnesses that we can gather all the aspects of even common objects. The impressions made upon different minds are reflected in the extracts I have given, and the reader cannot fail to have presented to him an exact picture of the oldest form of the drama that is now extant. The natives furnish, in these exhibitions, examples of tragedy, tragi-comedy, comedy, and farce; and the skill they evince in producing their pieces—all of their own composition, and not seldom, of late years, representations of scenes they have witnessed when in contact with the whites—sufficiently prove that in mimicry and in invention they are not surpassed by any race. Their music is not good, but they have not arrived at that stage at which good music is possible.
These dances, performed nearly always at night, and not seldom when the light of the moon is sufficient to enable a European to read a book; the bright fires, when there is no moon; the weird figures; the shadows cast by the trees which encircle the space appropriated to the dancers; the sounds produced by the beating of the rugs; the singing, now shrill and piercing, now low and soft; the rattling of the sticks and weapons as the movements are hastened; the hisses and hoarse grunts of the performers, and the deep, smothered voices of the black spectators—make altogether a picture which can be witnessed only in Australia, and which leaves on the mind of the cultivated European an impression which can never be effaced.
The natives appear to have resorted to fighting and dancing at certain seasons, in order to break the dreary monotony of their lives; and in seeking such relief they but followed the practices of other races.
The grand war-dance of the New Zealanders, and the propitiatory dances to Hindoo deities as practised in India, closely resemble in the movements of the dancers, the chants, the beating of drums, and the striking together of sticks to keep time, the regulated dances of the natives of Australia.
The black drum (Waropa) of New Guinea, the tom-tom of the East Indies, and the drum of the European, are undoubtedly improvements on the tightly-folded opossum skin of the Australian; but the latter, as suggested by Sir Thomas Mitchell, gives the first hint of the ancient kettle-drum (τυμπανον).
