Christmas Day is regarded as a festival by the blacks who live near the habitations of the white men, it being customary at this period for the settlers to distribute among them provisions and spirits, with which they contrive to render themselves _perfectly happy_. Several tribes had formed their encampment on and about the Plains, for the occasion, their huts had been speedily erected, by collecting the branches of trees, and lying over them sheets of bark, so placed as to form a shelter to windward; the fire being made in front. Some appeared in “native costume,” with an extra daub of red ochre, and the “bolombine” round the head; others wore tufts of the yellow crest of the white cockatoo, pending from their beards; but there were some who approximated to civilized society in dress, being arrayed in shirt, trowsers, and handkerchief;—and when thus cleanly “rigged out” in European finery, their personal appearance was not unprepossessing,—not that I mean to say they will bear away the palm for personal beauty. Some of the “black fellers” had merely a jacket, others only a shirt: the garments, however, were merely put on for the occasion, to be soon after laid aside, as they find clothing materially obstruct them when engaged in hunting or other expeditions. The putting on the European garments serves merely to gratify their vanity, making them look “like white feller,” as they express it. Having observed, to one who petitioned me for a pair of “inexpressibles,” to look “like white feller,” that his father did not wear breeches; he replied, “My fadder no see white feller trowsers—_if make a light_ (see) make get; but no white feller sit down this place when my fadder here.” The “ladies” are conspicuous principally for their head gear; glowing in grease and red ochre, the ringlets of these “dark angels” were decorated with opossum tails, the extremities of other animals, and the incisor teeth of the kangaroo; some had the “Cambun” (“Bolombine” of the Tumat country,) or fillet daubed with pipe-clay bound round the forehead: this ornament is sometimes made from the stringy bark tree, as well as from the tendons of the kangaroo’s tail: lateral lines of pipe-clay ornamented the upper part of their faces, breast, and arms. Both men and women have raised cicatrices over the breast, arms, and back; but the forms of these personal decorations are various. They regarded with a degree of awe, a keyed bugle, with which a gentleman amused himself at this place: they called it the _Cobbong (large) whistle_; and were more pleased with the slow airs played upon it, than those of a lively and quick movement.