Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/160

 They have also soft sweet voices, and a merry ringing laugh. If the men are ugly, the women are hideous. The slightness of the men seems in them to degenerate into absolute absence of muscle: their hands, arms, feet, and legs being more like the paws and claws of the lower animals than the limbs of Christians (as we used to say in Ireland). The fact is, I believe, that they are not so well fed as the men, getting a smaller share of opossums, rats, grubs, and such small deer: their principal food consists of roots, which they dig up, particularly the murnong—a plant with a flower like the dandelion, and with a tuberose root, also of the gum of the mimosa, which they dissolve in water. Another cause of their miserable appearance is the age at which they become mothers—as early, I believe, as twelve or thirteen years old; and in such cases, the appearance of maternity connected with the infantile expression of these poor creatures' faces, forms a contrast which it is painful to witness. The children are like little pot-bellied cherubims, made of India rubber, and are rather nice-looking little animals: they are very good-humoured, and I never heard but one of them cry while I was in the country.

There is a prevalent idea amongst the settlers that the natives have no canine teeth; but this is a mistake. Amongst the children I have observed the pointed character of the true canine tooth, though as they grow up the point wears away, and, in. shape, these then differ but little from the incisor teeth: but, not even in childhood, is the difference marked as it is amongst Euro-