108 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



CHARACTER. 



It is doubtful what grade of intellectual capacity is to be assigned 

 to this people. Several who have been taken from the forest when 

 young, and received instruction, have shown a readiness in acquiring 

 knowledge and a quickness of apprehension which have surprised 

 their teachers. Most of the natives learn the English language with 

 great facility, and the children who were under the instruction of the 

 missionary at Wellington Valley evinced, in his opinion, a greater 

 aptitude for music than most white children. With all this, it must 

 be said, that the impression produced on the mind of a stranger, by 

 an intercourse with the aborigines, in their natural state, is that of 

 great mental obtuseness, or, in plain terms, an almost brutal stu- 

 pidity. They never count beyond four, or, in some tribes, three ; all 

 above this number is expressed by a term equivalent to many. 

 Their reasoning powers seem to be very imperfectly developed. 

 The arguments which are addressed to them by the white settlers, 

 for the purpose of convincing or persuading them, are often such as 

 we should use towards a child, or a partial idiot. Their superstitions 

 evince, for the most part, this same character of silliness. Some are 

 so absurd as to excite at once laughter and amazement. The 

 absurdity, it should be remarked, is not the result of an extravagant 

 imagination, as with some portion of the Hindoo mythology, but 

 downright childishness and imbecility. One instance, given on the 

 authority of Mr. Threlkeld, missionary at Lake Macquarie, will 

 probably be sufficient. In a bay, at the northwest extremity of that 

 lake, are many petrifactions of wood, which the natives believe to be 

 fragments of a large rock that formerly fell from heaven and destroyed 

 a number of people. The author of this catastrophe was an enormous 

 lizard of celestial origin, who collected the men together, and then 

 caused the stone to fall. His anger had been excited against them 

 by the impiety which they had evinced in killing vermin (lice), by 

 roasting them in the fire. Those who had killed them by cracking 

 were speared to death by him with a long reed which he had brought 

 from the skies. When all the offenders were destroyed, the lizard 

 reascended to heaven, where he still remains. 



It is evident that the chief interest which can be taken in such a 

 people will arise from the singularities that distinguish them from 

 the rest of the human race. These singularities are especially 



