INHABITANTS OF AUSTRALIA. 381 



succeeded in domesticating. Nevertheless, industry has been so far developed among 

 certain tribes that they appreciate the advantage of taking foreign articles in 

 exchange for skins, nets of vegetable fibre, spear- heads, diverse pigments, and 

 other native produce. This intertribal commerce is carried on through the so-called 

 ngalla icatos, who are solemnly elected to the office, and who act as mediators 

 between their own and other tribes whose languages they speak. Thanks to cer- 

 tain pass-words, signs, and " writing sticks," they are able to present themselves 

 everywhere with confidence, their person being sacred even in time of war. 



The remarkable development of certain Australian tribes is shown especially by 

 their knowledge of the starry firmament. They give to the different constella- 

 tions the names of legendary heroes, and are able exactly to describe their position 

 according to the eight points dividing the sphere. The path of moon and stars 

 enables them to determine the hours with great accuracy, although the poverty of 

 their idioms in names of the numerals prevents them from having any exact sense of 

 measure, and from combining the primitive elements with sufficient skill to develop 

 a rudimentary geometry. They acquire languages with remarkable facility, and 

 in the mixed schools where the native children are seated by the side of the whites, 

 the latter are not always at the head of the class. 



Their linguistic faculty is probably due to the extreme delicacy of their sense 

 of hearing. They have no musical instruments except rude drums of kangaroo 

 skin, and in some of the southern tribes a kind of flute on which they play with 

 the nose. But singing is much practised in joy or grief, during the fury of battle, 

 or even to allay the pangs of hunger. Events interesting to the community are 

 also commemorated in song. Like the South African bushmen, to whom they 

 have often been compared, they are fond of figuring human faces and animal 

 forms on their skin garments, on the bark of trees and the face of the rock. The 

 paintings seen by Grey on the banks of the Glenelg in the north-west were in 

 diverse colours, black, red, yellow, white, blue, coated over with a gum which 

 while enhancing the brightness of the tints protected them from the weather. 

 Certain figures reproduced by Grey recall those of Byzantine saints surrounded 

 with their luminous nimbus. This traveller also noticed a head in relief remark- 

 ably well sculptured on a sandstone rock. 



In the central parts of the continent the most conspicuous objects are images 

 of snakes done in charcoal or painted with ochre. Grey also mentions certain 

 designs traced on a person clothed in a long red robe, which so closely resembled 

 written characters that it was impossible not to associate the representation with 

 the idea of an inscription. It would seem natural to attribute such designs to 

 some casual visitors from the neighbouring Eastern Archipelago, but for the fact 

 that the less rudely executed figures were precisely those which were discovered 

 farthest from the coast. Figures, however, have also been found carved on the 

 surface of the rocks far to the east both in Queensland and New Sou^h Wales. 



Funeral rites vary to a surj^rising degree from tribe to tribe. In one district 

 the dead are burnt, in another they are buried or else exposed on rocks or the 

 branches of trees. In South Australia they are interred with the head turned 



