ISO MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Great efforts have been made by believers in the natural 



equality of all mankind to present the native insti- 

 Capachy. tutions, religious ideas, and general capacity in as 



favourable a light as possible. Brough Smyth 

 shows plainly enough that children in the schools of Victoria are 

 capable of assimilating a certain amount of teaching, and appeal 

 is especially made to their artistic sense and power of delineation, 

 even in the wild state, as shown by the pictorial representations 

 in their caves and rock shelters. Favourite " motives " of this 

 primitive " School of Art," which compares badly with those of the 

 Bushmen and Palaeolithic cave-men, are the human hand and 

 the snake, and this is the account given of the "technique" by 

 Mr Ernest Giles: "The drawing [of the hand] is done by filling the 

 mouth with charcoal powder if the device is to be black, if red 

 with red ochre powder, damping the wall where the mark is to be 

 left, and placing the palm of the hand against it, with the fingers 

 stretched out ; the charcoal or ochre powder is then blown 

 against the back of the hand ; when it is withdrawn, it leaves 

 the space occupied by the hand and fingers clean, while the 

 surrounding portions of the wall are all black or red, as the case 

 may be. One device represents a snake going into a hole ; the 

 hole is actually in the rock, while the snake is painted on the 

 wall, and the spectator is to suppose that its head is just inside 

 the hole. The body of the reptile is curled round and round the 

 hole, though its breadth is out of all proportion to its length, 

 being 7 or 8 inches thick and only 2 to 3 feet long. It is painted 

 with charcoal ashes which had been mixed up with some animal's 

 or reptile's fat 1 ." The process resembles that of our sand-engraving 

 on glass-ware. 



Their sense of right and wrong Mr Giles describes as hazy, 



and he is uncertain whether they have any know- 

 Id f a e s . lgl US ledge of a Supreme Being, allowing, however, that 



" nothing of the nature of worship, prayer, or 

 sacrifice has been observed'-'." Elsewhere he argues that they 



1 Australia Twice Traversed, 1889, Vol. I. p. 78. For other processes see 

 Mr R. H. Mathews' Paper on The Rock Paintings and Carvings of the Aus- 

 tralian Aborigines, in Jour. Anthrop. Ins/. 1896, p. 145. 



2 Ib. I. p. 44. 



