34 Voyage of the Novara. 



of Australia the natives use human skulls as drinking cups, 

 and one instance is on record where a portion of a human 

 skeleton was habitually used by an entire race as a tool. 

 Each woman has one of these bone calabashes, which she 

 usually has hollowed out and manufactured herself. In 

 the tolerably comprehensive ethnographic collection of the 

 Australian Museum we saw several examples of these 

 hideous drinking vessels ! With respect to the idea of a 

 future life, or the immortality of the soul, the natives seem to 

 have very contracted notions, principally confined to a 

 superstitious dread of evil spirits, and to the very singular 

 notion that after death they are converted into whites, and 

 that the Englishmen who now people their hunting grounds 

 are the spirits of their ancestors thus transformed ! 



At various parts of the colony, especially among the out- 

 lying mountains and bare rocks adjoining Middle Harbour, 

 Camp Cove, Point Piper, Mossman's Cove, Lang's Cove, &c., 

 the eye is attracted by numbers of rude sculptures hewn 

 in the stone, which usually represent terrestrial objects, such 

 as kangaroos, emus, flying-squirrels, fish, tortoises, and, above 

 all, numerous representations of natives performing the 

 Coroborry. This is a sort of war-dance, in which those who 

 participate usually paint their bodies with white lines, like a 

 skeleton, and seen through the obscurity of night, leaping 

 around a faint fire, have the appearance of a set of dead 

 bodies dancing. 



If we ask any of the black men of the present generation 



