Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/66

40 I am indebted to the Government Astronomers of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland for the above particulars.

This increase in rainfall means that the tribes enjoying it lead an easier life, which condition has probably assisted them in making the social advance which I shall show later on has taken place, especially in those tribes living on the coast. As an indication of relative climates, I may point out that the tribes of Central Australia had no kind of clothing; I only saw one instance of a covering being worn in the tribes of the Delta of the Cooper, that of a woman suffering from disease who sheltered herself under a single pelican skin. The tribes who lived in the intermediate parts, and particularly those of the tablelands and coastal regions, made good rugs of opossum and other skins, which they used for both warmth and covering when necessary—at other times going naked.

Such, then, is the country in which the tribes of South-Eastern Australia have been living for ages, as part of an isolated aboriginal race free from disturbing external influences, and left to work out its social life.