Aboriginal Rock Paintings and Carvings. 145 



ordinary pigment. On removing the hand, the space it occupied 

 has the natural colour of the rock, wliilst around its margin is 

 smeared with the colour used by the operator. If the object to 

 be drawn be a boomerang, a tomaliawk, a waddy, etc., the same 

 course is followed, if this method of producing it be adopted. 

 All the objects shown in Figs. 3 and 4 are drawn in this 

 style, as well as some of those appearing in Figs. 2, 5 and 6, 

 Plate 8. 



In the impression method before mentioned, the colour to be 

 used was mixed with water, or with bird or tish oil, in a hollow 

 piece of bark, or in a stone with a depression in it, into which 

 the hand was dipped, and then pressed firmly against the surface 

 of the rock, when the impression of the hand was left very clearly. 

 In Fig. 2, the rows of twenty-seven and thirteen hands are 

 done in this way, the remaining seven being stencilled. I have 

 never seen or heard of any figures except the hand having been 

 executed in this method. Mr. W. E. Armit, a writer in Curr's 

 Australian Bace,Yo\. II., p. 301, says^" I have often myself 

 seen the blacks on the Leichhardt River, Queensland, imprint 

 their hands, stained with red ochre, on rocks and trees, and I 

 cannot accept such marks as a proof of antiquity." 



In the districts visited by me in collecting information on this 

 subject, I have found impressed hands in comparatively few 

 caves, the stencil method being that generally adopted. Perhaps 

 the work was more easily done in the latter style— there being 

 no necessity for preparing and mixing the colour ; or, it may be 

 that impressed hands had some particular meaning. 



Native pictures of men, animals, and other objects, to which 

 neither of the preceding methods would be applicable, are drawn 

 in on t line in various colours. In these cases the colours used are 

 mixed with bird or fish oil, or the fat of some animal ; pipe-clay 

 and red ochre ))eing used for white and red, respectively ; and 

 where black was retjuired, it was made from ground charcoal, or 

 soot, similarly mixed with grease. Mixing the colours with an 

 oily or fatty substance caused them to penetrate the surface of 

 the rock, and become very durable. In some cases the figures 

 were merely outlined, as in Fig. 6, in others as in Fig. 1, 

 they were shown in solid colour all over ; whilst in others the 

 space within the margin of the outlines was shaded by strokes of 



