On my arrival at this station, I found a number of the native blacks collected about, all, even the ladies, in a state of nudity, “naked, but not ashamed:” some were busily employed in making rude spears, by sharpening the point of a long stick, which was afterwards hardened in the fire: they were preparing to hunt their “evening prey.” “Give them,” the men at the stations observe, “ever so much bread or meat, still they will hunt opossum and other game.” The spears they used, were twelve or fourteen feet in length. On a sunny day, when there is little wind, the water clear, and comparatively tranquil, the aborigines go on the river in small bark canoes to spear fish, more particularly about the rocky parts of the river, and usually return with a large quantity: they also spear the “water-mole,” (_Ornithorynchus_,) if they observe any during the river excursion. Nothing comes amiss to the blacks for food: they may be said to devour “every living thing that runs upon the surface of the earth, or in the waters beneath.” I was examining the fine muscular structure, and the raised cicatrices, which were numerous over the arms and chest, of one of the natives, (and which he regarded as highly ornamental,) when, puzzled to ascertain the meaning of my curiosity, after I had finished, he whispered to the stock-keeper, if “he white feller gentleman ever see black feller before.” But as for procuring an examination of their phrenological organs, it was a labour of some difficulty, and even danger; for they seemed to regard it as witchcraft, or some magic ceremony: and when they even did submit, they evinced much fear, and preserved a very serious countenance during the operation, as if dreading the result; similar to young ladies, when under Deville’s hands for the same purpose, their secretiveness and caution being overcome in some degree, by curiosity.[90]