The methods of cooking the animals they caught do not tend to raise the character of the natives. Neither as regards fish, flesh, or fowl were they as careful as they might have been, nor as clean. They were indeed, to speak the truth, dirty in their habits. They ate portions of animals that well-bred people universally reject; and they cooked some that Europeans would eat raw, and ate raw very many that would be palatable only when well cooked. Like the Romans, they were fond of moths (zeuzera); but they consumed also earth-worms and other small creatures whose names are not usually mentioned. Their ovens for cooking large animals, or a number of small animals, were formed of stones. The stones were heated and placed in a hole in the ground, grass was thrown on them, and the animal to be cooked was laid on the grass, and covered with grass, and other stones heated in the fire were piled on the top. The whole was covered with earth and left until the process was complete. Sometimes they made holes in the oven with sticks and poured in water so as to steam or parboil the animal, but in general it was left to the operation of the heated stones. A bird was sometimes covered with clay and broiled in the embers of the fire, and this method, if certain precautions be taken, is excellent, and the gourmet would delight in the result.
Sir George Grey describes also a manner of cooking fish and the flesh of the kangaroo which he thinks is worthy of being adopted by the most civilized nations. It is called Yudarn dukoon, and the fish and other meats so cooked are said to be, and indeed must be, delicious.
Other writers have a high opinion of some of the native methods of cooking. The natives of the Macleay River, it is said, always clean and gut their fish, and cook them carefully on hot embers.
They are not able to boil anything. They have no pottery, and they have not even attempted to form any vessels that could be placed on the fire, which they might have done by covering their closely-woven baskets with clay.
Mr. Tylor states, on the authority of Mr. T. Baines, that in North Australia the natives immerse heated stones in water, poured into holes in the ground, and boil fish, the tortoise, and the smaller alligators; and that they may, therefore, in these times at least, be counted as "stone-boilers." With this practice the natives of the south were not acquainted, if recorded observations are to be trusted.
In broiling or roasting or in stewing in ovens the native was not, according to our notions, a good cook, and not being a good cook, any advance in civilization was nearly impossible. The proper nourishment of the body is of more importance than many other things recommended as indispensable to the improvement of savage and other peoples.
It cannot be denied that cannibalism prevailed at one time throughout the whole of Australia. The natives killed and ate little children, and the bodies of warriors slain in battle were eaten. They did not feast upon human flesh, however, like the natives of Fiji. They appear to have eaten portions of the bodies of the slain in obedience to customs arising out of their superstitions, and very rarely to have sacrificed a human life merely that they might cook and eat the
