XXI AUSTRALIAN AND POLYNESIAN RACES 469 



they must again and again, have been brought into contact 

 with more advanced races. There are clear signs of inter- 

 mixture in the north both with Malays and Papuans, yet 

 this has had little or no effect on the customs of the people. 

 But some higher race has evidently at one time formed a 

 settlement on the north-west coast, as indicated by the 

 very remarkable cave paintings and sculptures discovered 

 by the late Sir George Grey in his earliest exploration of 

 that country. They were found in the valley of the 

 Glenelg River in North West Australia, about sixty miles 

 inland and twenty miles south of Prince Regent's River, in 

 a very rugged tract of country. The paintings consist of 

 representations of human heads and bodies, apparently of 

 females clothed to the armpits, but the faces are without 

 any indication of mouths. The heads are surrounded 

 with a broad head-dress or halo, and one of the figures 

 wears a necklace. They are executed in red on a white 

 ground, the clothing being marked with a red pattern, and 

 the broad hat or halo in some of the figures is coloured 

 blue, red and yellow. These designs are nearly life-size, 

 and the largest is on the sloping roof of a cave thus 

 appearing to look down on a visitor. There are also some 

 drawings of kangaroos, more finished than any of the work 

 of modern Australians. On the roof of another cave there 

 was a full-length figure, ten feet high, dressed in a loose 

 red garment from neck to ankles, the hands and feet being 

 well executed and the latter apparently, covered with shoes. 

 The white face is mask-like, showing the eyes only and 

 around it are circular concentric bandages, the inner one 

 yellow, the outer red, looking something like a broad cap 

 and outer bonnet. On the upper part of this are five 

 letters or characters, having an oriental aspect. Although 

 poorly executed, these figures have a refined character, as 

 utterly out of place among the Australian natives as would 

 be any modern work of art. Very near one of these caves 

 there was found on a large vertical sandstone rock a well- 

 executed human head, hollowed out to about an inch and 

 a half deep in the centre, the whole head being two feet 

 in length and sixteen inches broad. The singularity of it 

 is that it is perfectly European in type, both in form of 



