NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 461 



Mussels, and Fish. Oil every point or projection, formed where a side branch is 

 given off by the main creek, is to be seen a vast kitchen midden or shell mound. So 

 numerous are these heaps of refuse, and so extensive, that it has been a regular trade 

 at which white men have worked all their lives to turn over these heaps and sift out 

 the undecomposed shells for making lime by burning them ; unfortunately the numerous 

 weapons thus found in the heaps have mostly been thrown away. There is now not 

 a single black on the creek. Many of the mounds are very ancient, and it must have 

 taken hundreds of years for such heaps to accumulate. Stone hatchet blades are still 

 to be picked up in considerable numbers, and several were obtained. The softer layers 

 weathering out from under the harder slabs of the horizontally bedded sandstones, form 

 numerous shelters and low-roofed caves along the creek banks. It was in these caves or 

 " gunyas " that the blacks used to camp, and in front of all of them a mass of shells slopes 

 down towards the creek just as at the Cape of Good Hope. One of the heaps was dug 

 into ; places were found where fires had been made, and there were numerous bits of 

 burnt stick and charcoal, a piece of wallaby bone charred by the fire, and the thigh bone 

 of a black woman. This latter was found without any of the remaining bones, the 

 woman having been perhaps eaten piecemeal. These relics were buried in a mass of 

 cockle, oyster, and mussel shells mingled with much black powdery matter composed of 

 decayed shells and other debris. 



The walls and roofs of the caves are covered all over with drawings executed 

 by the blacks in charcoal on the rock. These are interesting from their rude 

 character. They represent Opossums, Fish, Sharks, and white men. Near one of the 

 caves, on a flat slab of stone standing naturally erect, is a figure of a Kangaroo cut 

 out in the stone itself ; the figure is 5 feet in height, and is marked out by means 

 of an incised groove, an inch and a half in depth. The figure is shaded, or rather 

 rendered more conspicuous by the chipping of irregular small holes all over the area 

 representing the body, and also, as in the charcoal drawings of Opossums, by means 

 of lines. The fore-legs of the Kangaroo seem not to have been finished, or the artist has 

 been especially unsuccessful in his attempts to represent them, and perhaps has tried to 

 correct them, as appears possible from the number of lines. The contour line of the 

 body is carried across the root of the tail. Similar drawings executed by cutting grooves 

 in stone are common about Sydney. 



Besides the drawings, in almost every cave were hand marks. These marks have 

 been the subject of much discussion, and various speculations have been made as to 

 some important meaning of the " Red Hand of Australia." They have been made 

 by placing a hand against the flat stone, and then squirting a mixture of whitish 

 clay and water from the mouth all around. The hand being removed, a tracing of it 

 stands out in relief, and where the sandstone is red, appears red on a whitish 

 ground. The hand marks have evidently been made haphazard, like the drawings. 



