Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/375

Rh both the youths asked him to tell more about them and their ways of living. Mr. Watson kindly assented, and at once began his story.

"At starting let me say," he remarked, "that the aborigines of Australia are about the lowest type of the human race that can be found, with the possible exception of the natives of Terra del Fuego. They belong distinctively to the black race, though their hair while curly has not the woolly crispness of that of the African negro. In the interior, away from settlements, they go entirely naked, and when white men first came to Australia the natives had no knowledge of the uses of clothing. Around the settlements they have adopted civilized customs in the matter of dress, but only upon compulsion. I have known the blacks who were employed at a sheep-station to go naked when away from the dwelling of their employer, and only resume their clothing on returning to the house."

"What kind of houses do they live in when by themselves?" Frank asked.

"They had not learned to build houses until the Europeans instructed them," was the reply, "and the wild tribes of the interior still continue to live as they did of yore. They occasionally build rude huts of bark by inclining two or three strips against each other in the form of a cone, but more frequently their only protection against the weather is a single strip of bark, or a large bough of a tree, inclined towards the wind, and held in place by an upright stick.