es,
into deadly conflict. My knowledge of them is chiefly drawn from what I
have observed of their haunts, their painted caves, and drawings. I have
moreover become acquainted with several of their weapons, some of their
ordinary implements, and I took some pains to study their disposition and
habits as far as I could.

In their manner of life, their roving habits, their weapons, and mode of
hunting, they closely resemble the other Australian tribes with which I
have since become pretty intimately acquainted; whilst in their form and
appearance there is a striking difference. They are in general very tall
and robust, and exhibit in their legs and arms a fine full development of
muscle which is unknown to the southern races.

They wear no clothes, and their bodies are marked by scars and wales.
They seem to have no regular mode of dressing their hair, this appearing
to depend entirely on individual taste or caprice.

They appear to live in tribes subject, perhaps, to some individual
authority; and each tribe has a sort of capital, or headquarters, where
the women and children remain whilst the men, divided into small parties,
hunt and shoot in different directions. The largest number we saw
together amounted to nearly two hundred, women and children included.

THEIR WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS.

Their arms consist of stone-headed spears (which they throw with great
strength and precision) of throwing sticks, boomerangs or kileys, clubs,
and stone hatchets. The dogs they use in hunting I have already stated to
be of a kind unknown in other parts of Australia, and they were never
seen wild by us.

The natives manufacture their water-buckets and weapons very neatly; and
make from the bark of a tree a light but strong cord. Their huts, of
which I only saw those on the sea-coast, are constructed in an oval form
of the boughs of trees, and are roofed with dry reeds. The diameter of
one which I measured was about fourteen feet at the base.

LANGUAGE.

Their language is soft and melodious, so much so as to lead to the
inference that it differs very materially, if not radically, from the
more southern Australian dialects which I have since had an opportunity
of enquiring into. Their gesticulation is expressive, and their bearing
manly and noble. They never speared a horse or sheep belonging to us and,
judging by the degree of industry shown in the execution of some of their
paintings, the absence of anything offensive in the