Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/133

 generally entertained of their treachery. On many occasions where I have met these wanderers in the wilds far removed from the abodes of civilization, and when I have been accompanied by a single native boy, I have been received by them in the kindest and most friendly manner. I have ever found them of a lively, cheerful disposition, patiently putting up with inconveniences and privations, and never losing that natural good temper which so strongly characterizes them. . . . It is a mistaken idea, as well as an unjust one, that supposes the natives to be without sensibility of feeling. A fine intelligent young boy was by his father's consent living with me at the Murray for many weeks."

The old man took the son to Adelaide, where the lad died.

"For nearly a year I never saw anything more of the father, although he occasionally had been within a few miles of my neighbourhood. One day I accidentally fell in with him. Upon seeing me he immediately burst into tears, and was unable to speak. It was the first time he had met me since his son's death, and my presence forcibly reminded him of his loss."

The same grief mastered him when he went to Eyre's house. The name of a lost friend is never mentioned by the natives, and when they have heard it from unthinking or rude lips they have been known to go away silently in tears.

It is just to add that Eyre depicts, like other writers, the brutal treatment of women, the occasional licentiousness in manners, and the absence of respect for chastity which prevailed.

Count Strzelecki, who had wandered in many lands, travelled and observed much in Australia. He found analogies between the skulls of Europeans and natives.

"In many instances it was even remarked that the facial angle of the white was more acute, the superciliary ridge, the centres of ossification of the frontal bone, and the ridge of the occipital one more developed, and the inferior maxillary more widely expanded, than in the skulls of the aborigines. Yet, notwithstanding a partial inferiority in shape in some of the details, the native of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land possesses on the whole a well-proportioned frame. His limbs, less fleshy and massive than those of a well-formed African, exhibit all the symmetry and peculiarly well-defined muscular development and well-knit articula tions and roundness which characterize the negro; hence, compared with the latter, he is swifter in his movements and more graceful. . . . When beheld in the posture of striking, or throwing his spear, his attitude leaves nothing to be desired in point of manly grace."

One obstacle to obtaining information as to Australian ideas of the supernatural was the fact that they were closely bound up with the tribal ceremonies, of which women and children were allowed to know nothing, and of which none