Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/82

 a hostile indication on the native's part. Morrill, an English seaman, who had been wrecked seventeen years ago (in 1846), on the North-eastern coast, about Cape Upstart, and had lived with the natives thereabouts during all that time, brings us the latest accounts of this and other of their customs. He re-appeared amongst his countrymen at the northern out-stations at Queensland in February last (1863). The natives had treated him kindly after their own rough fashion. But he is clear on the subject of their cannibalism. He says: "My experience with the blacks proves that they are cannibals; parents eat their own children, and usually they eat the bodies of those killed in fight, and I would not trust them generally." All these Aborigines seem to have a great difficulty in procuring any other food than fish, and the scanty edibles of the natural vegetation. This circumstance, together with the keen appetite given by the Australian air, to which our travellers repeatedly testify, may supply the original motives to cannibalism, according to the conjectures of some writers. The pursuit of a foe has the double stimulus of a feast and a revenge. "O for the kidney-fat of an enemy!" is the motto of aboriginal knight-errantry. But romance is sadly exploded in the fact that friend