very respectful, she, on this occasion, looked angrily at me, and said, "What's that? Fat! Me not like 'em tea with fat!" The cook had put a good deal of cream into the tea, and Elizabeth would have none of it.
Péron found the like strong objection to fat amongst the natives of King George's Sound:—"Ils burent du café, mangèrent du biscuit et du bœuf salé; mais ils refusèrent de manger du lard que nous leurs offrîmes, et le laissèrent sur des pierres, sans y toucher."[1]
Their aversion to fat probably arises from the circumstance that, in their belief, the fat of some animals is poisonous—as, for instance, that of the duck-billed platypus—and that the eating of the fat of some animals is interdicted. If they ate of fat that was given to them by whites, they might violate a tribal law.
Sir Thomas Mitchell mentions that when his party killed an emu none of the Aboriginal young men would eat of the bird, and, on making enquiries, he found that young men were not allowed to eat either the flesh or the eggs of the emu until some ceremony was performed. In the case of "Piper," Sir Thomas Mitchell's blackfellow, it was deemed essential that he should be rubbed all over with emu fat by an old man. "Richardson," an old man, ministered unto "Piper ;" he was well rubbed with the fat, and afterwards he was not afraid to eat emu flesh. The result of eating it, to any young man, until authorized and empowered so to do, was an eruption of boils and the breaking out of sores all over the body.
It cannot be doubted, I think, that while, probably, these prohibitions had their origin in superstition, and that young and old were alike credulous, the doctors and sorcerers turned their credulity to profit. They secured for themselves the best of the food, and managed to get it without labor; but unless they had had the aids derived from the false beliefs of the people, they could not have maintained for any length of time a system which pressed so injuriously on the young and active men, and was so obviously for the advantage of the drones in the hive. Superstition, as an ally, enabled the old men to maintain themselves in comfort, and to feast to their content, at tunes when the workers of the camp might be sorely pressed by hunger. Superior strength, and the influence which age commands, might have sufficed for the easy government of the women and children in this matter; but the young men must have had a firm belief in the doctrines taught by the sorcerers, or they would never have abstained from good food which they themselves had procured, and patiently watched the old wizards of the camp while they ate the emu and feasted on the rich meat afforded by the iguana.
Mirrn-yongs, Shell-mounds, and Stone-shelters.
The large heaps of earth, charcoal, and ashes—the cooking-places of the natives—the shell-mounds on the sea-coast, and the stone-circles on the plains, show that this people have occupied the country for a long period—how long it is impossible to guess. The mounds and the stone-circles are of such a character
- ↑ Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes, 1800-1804, vol. II., p. 154.
