Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/163

 every one conversant with this people that they pay but little regard to glass beads, bright buttons, or any of the toys by which savages in general are caught, and this has been sometimes cited as a proof of superiority of intellect, but I view it in a different light; to me this insensibility only appears to argue a lower social state;—one in which the Australian native, wholly engaged in procuring a mere subsistence, seems sunk in apathy with regard to every thing not conducing to this end. The existence of taste, however rude, indicates the appreciation of the beautiful, and this may be fairly regarded as the measure of the capability of refinement.

They are migratory in their habits, remaining but a few days at a time in any one place. These migrations are however confined within certain limits. In the eastern district they do not build huts of any kind, contenting themselves with a break-weather made of the boughs, or, in wet weather, of the bark, of trees: one of these they put up in a few minutes, and contrive to make of these simple materials a very comfortable lair. This break-weather, or mi-mi, is about four feet in height, and is in shape something like half a bird's nest inverted;