152 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



arrival to the up-country people. They cross over to Lake x\lbert, 

 where they meet hostile tribes, and marvellous contests ensue. 

 Nurunderi throws flat stones into Lake Alexandrina, which 

 become bream, and he goes up to the Coorong, where he slays 

 a chief who has kidnapped his children. When he reaches 

 Encounter Bay his wives forsake him, but he calls upon the sea to 

 overflow, and they are all swallowed up in the waves. In the 

 end he goes up to Wyirrewarri^ i.e. Cloudland, where he now 

 dwells. 



Although the practice of cannibalism has been questioned, 

 Lumholtz shows that the aborigines are omnivorous in the 

 strictest sense of the word, devouring everything at all digestible, 

 from vermin and insects to man. He mentions live beetles 

 and their larvae, fleas, pediculi, grasshoppers, children (by their 

 mothers), captives, and people generally. "The Australians 

 are cannibals. A fallen foe, be it man, woman, or child, is 

 eaten as the choicest delicacy ; they know no greater luxury 

 than the flesh of a blackmail 1 .' 3 Religious rites and ceremonial 

 customs do not apply here, the natives knowing nothing of such 

 observances. 



A common test of a people's culture is the treatment of their 

 women, and in this respect the Australians must, as 



ofTiirw^mln. Prof ' R ' Semon shows 2 > be ranked below the Bushman 

 and on a level with the Fuegians. When we read 

 the accounts of the barbarous treatment to which the Australian 

 lubra is habitually subjected, all our preconceived notions of the 

 "noble savage" are quickly dispelled, and we begin to wonder 

 how mankind ever succeeded in struggling upward to a higher 

 state. Brough Smyth gives us a truly pathetic account of the 

 marriage customs in vogue among the Victorian tribes : " A man 

 having a daughter of 13 or 14 years of age arranges with some 

 elderly person for the disposal of her; and, when all are agreed, she 

 is brought out and told that her husband wants her. Perhaps she 

 has never seen him but to loathe him. The father carries a spear 

 and a waddy, or a tomahawk, and, anticipating resistance, is thus 

 prepared for it. The poor girl, sobbing and sighing, and muttering 



1 Op. dt. p. 101. 



2 Die Natur, 1896, No. 20. 



