succession of circular bandages, or rollers, or what appeared to be painted to represent such. These were colored red, yellow, and white; and the eyes were the only features represented on the face. Upon the highest bandage or roller, a series of lines were painted in red; but although so regularly done as to indicate that they have some meaning, it was impossible to tell whether they were intended to depict written characters or some ornament for the head."[1] At the right hand of the figure there are shown in the drawing, in three perpendicular lines, a number of circles—a kind of ornamentation already described. Capt. Grey seems to have regarded all these figures as the work of the Aboriginal natives.
Fronting one of the caves was seen cut out in sandstone rock the profile of a human face and head. The rock was hard, and Capt. Grey states that to have removed such a large portion of it with no better tools than the stone knife and hatchet, such as the Australians use, must have entailed great labor. "The head," he says, "was two feet in length, and sixteen inches in breadth in the broadest part; the depth of the profile increased gradually from the edges, where it was nothing, to the centre, where it was an inch and a half; the ear was rather badly placed, but otherwise the whole of the work was good, and far superior to what a savage race could be supposed capable of executing."
The head shown in the drawing at page 206 resembles that of a European; and, if it was the work of an Aboriginal, is a proof that the artistic skill of this people has been greatly underrated.
In one of the caves Capt. Grey found imprinted on the sides the stamp of a hand and arm. The outline of the hand and arm was painted black, and the rock about it white.
These representations appear to be common in Western Australia and elsewhere. Mr. H. Y. L. Brown, formerly a Geological Surveyor in Western Australia, informs me that the natives make these pictures by blackening the hands and pressing them against the roof. He saw one cave in granite rock where there were many such figures of hands of different sizes, the form of each being cut out very neatly.
Indeed the practice of ornamenting caves, rocks, and trees, and cutting figures on the ground by removing the grass, is characteristic of this people. There are amongst the natives artists who take delight in depicting figures of animals, and scenes in their domestic life, and in making strange devices for their weapons. Their pictures are found in every part of the continent, and also on the islands adjacent to the continent to which they had access. A large number of references could be given illustrative of their love of art, but a few will suffice to induce the reader, perhaps, to regard with a higher interest the first attempts of a savage people to imitate the forms of natural objects, and to pourtray, though usually in no very durable form, incidents in their lives.
- ↑ Sir George Grey observes that "this figure brings to mind the description of the Prophet Ezekiel:—'Men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity.'—Chap. xxiii., 14, 15."
