Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume 2Sturt, Charles
History
Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume 2
Sturt, Charles
New South Wales -- Discovery and exploration; Sturt, Charles, 1795-1869
We found this part of the Morumbidgee much more populous than its upper
branches. When we halted, we had no fewer than forty-one natives with
us, of whom the young men were the least numerous. They allowed us to
choose a place for ourselves before they formed their own camp, and
studiously avoided encroaching on our ground so as to appear
troublesome. Their manners were those of a quiet and inoffensive
people, and their appearance in some measure prepossessing. The old men
had lofty foreheads, and stood exceedingly erect. The young men were
cleaner is their persons and were better featured than any we had seen,
some of them having smooth hair and an almost Asiatic cast of
countenance. On the other hand, the women and children were disgusting
objects. The latter were much subject to diseases, and were dreadfully
emaciated. It is evident that numbers of them die in their infancy for
want of care and nourishment. We remarked none at the age of incipient
puberty, but the most of them under six. In stating that the men were
more prepossessing than any we had seen, I would not be understood to
mean that they differed in any material point either from the natives
of the coast, or of the most distant interior to which I had been, for
they were decidedly the same race, and had the same leading features
and customs, as far as the latter could be observed. The sunken eye and
overhanging eyebrow, the high cheek-bone and thick lip, distended
nostrils, the nose either short or acquiline, together with a stout
bust and slender extremities, and both curled and smooth hair, marked
the natives of the Morumbidgee as well as those of the Darling. They
were evidently sprung from one common stock, the savage and scattered
inhabitants of a rude and inhospitable land. In customs they differed
in no material point from the coast natives, and still less from the
tribes on the Darling and the Castlereagh. They extract the front
tooth, lacerate their bodies, to raise the flesh, cicatrices being
their chief ornament; procure food by the same means, paint in the same
manner, and use the same weapons, as far as the productions of the
country will allow them. But as the grass-tree is not found westward of
the mountains, they make a light spear of a reed, similar to that of
which the natives of the southern islands form their arrows. These they
use for distant combat, and not only carry in numbers, but throw with
the boomerang to a great distance and with unerring precision, making
them to all intents and purposes as efficient as the bow and arrow.
They have a ponderous spear for close fight, and others of different
sizes for the chase. With regard to their laws, I believe they are
universally the same all over the known parts of New South Wales. The
old men have alone the privilege of eating the emu; and so submissive
are the young men to this regulation, that if, from absolute hunger or
under other pressing circumstances, one of them breaks through it,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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