Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/27

 INTRODUCTION. xvii as bleeding is resorted to amongst Europeans. Fractures are treated with splints and bandages;* but amongst some tribes the injured limbs are straightened and then encased in a coating of clay, which hardens and thus preserves the fracture from disturbance. In an instance related to the writer, the splints and bandages which had been applied to the broken leg of a native were removed when he was taken to his camp and the clay casing substituted. The same was done to a boy whose jaw had been fractured in falling from a horse. His face was covered with a thick clay mask. Both cases resulted in a cure, without leaving traces of lameness or disfigurement. Ulcers are generally sprinkled with alkaline wood ashes and the astringent juices of the bark of trees and grasses. Cuts and wounds are generally left to cure themselves, or are covered with clay to keep the air out; this, it is said, succeeds well. With such medical treatment it can hardly be expected that many recoveries take place, when illness is serious. Whenever any native becomes a burthen to his tribe by reason of infirmity or chronic sickness, he is abandoned by his fellows, and left to die. It is difficult to estimate the ages which the older people attain. Captain Grey and Mr. Eyre consider that they frequently live to seventy and even eighty years of age. Others, again, think that they scarcely go beyond forty. Many old men and tolerably old women used to be seen in the streets of Adelaide some years back, probably over fifty, or perhaps more; but none of them were decrepit or physically incapable of such exertions as the blacks are accustomed to make in their ordinary course of life. The treatment which the women experience must be taken into account in considering the causes which lead to the extinction of the native tribes. Amongst them the woman is an absolute slave. She is treated with the greatest cruelty and indignity, has to do all laborious work, and to carry all the burthens. For the slightest offence or dereliction of duty, she is beaten with a waddy or a yam stick, and not unfrequently speared. The records of the Supreme Court in Adelaide furnish numberless instances of
 * Eyre.