depicts with the nail of his thumb or a bone-awl, pictures of birds, and beasts, men, and scenes in his life.
He decorates the smooth rocks that front the sea, and finds in the representations that have been made by others and in his own efforts the same kind of delight that fills the mind of the civilized man when he sits before his easel.
Throughout Australia the practice of painting pictures in caves and on rocks, of inscribing strange devices on the barked trunks of trees, and of cutting away the grass so as to make figures on the ground, is common; and it is but just to repeat the observation of one well acquainted with their works, and say that nowhere is any trace of indecency to be seen.
The figures that are given in this work sufficiently answer the oft-repeated statement that the blacks of Australia are unable to understand a picture when they see it. They are fond of pictures; and one thing that has astonished Europeans is the care they take, when partially civilised, to decorate their huts with wood engravings and colored pictures. There is probably not a little child at any of the Aboriginal settlements that would not at once recognise a photographic portrait of any well-known person who regularly visited the station.
It is of great importance to ascertain with certainty the steps that have led to improvements in their arms and arts, and it is to be deplored that little information is available on a subject so interesting. There is some reason to believe that inventions have crept down gradually from the north. The longitudinal lines on some of the weapons of the West Australians are similar to a style of ornamentation common on the north and north-east coast. The Port Lincoln blacks are not equal to the natives of the Murray in fashioning their weapons, and there is little doubt that the natives living on the shores of Lake Eyre are far behind the men of the Murray and the Darling in many devices. They wind long strings round the body instead of the woven sash; and it is said the boomerang is in some parts of that district unknown. The bone fish-hook it is believed was used by only a few of the tribes of Victoria; and it is by no means certain that message-sticks were in common use amongst the people of the southern parts of Australia. Their shields, their spears, their nets, their hooks, indeed all they possess, appear to have been derived from the north; and some things—as, for instance, the closely wrought wicker bottle or basket made by the natives of Rockingham Bay—have not yet come very far southward. That they were gradually, very slowly—before the coming of the whites—adopting new contrivances leading to some improvement in their condition is I think certain, but their wandering habits as hunters and fishers, and the bonds formed of their superstitions, forbade the possibility of any rapid changes in their mode of life. It is only amongst the foremost nations of the earth that inventions and improvements advance by leaps and bounds.
The offensive weapons of the natives are neither few nor simple. Some of them are but little known; and probably but for the descriptions given in this volume all knowledge of such of those as are very uncommon would have been lost. A mere catalogue of the weapons I have collected would occupy much space.
