CLOTHING. 



A departure from this primitive mode of covering, and the adoption of the 

 white man's costume, have weakened the constitution of the aborigines, and 

 rendered them very liable to colds and pulmonary diseases, more particularly 

 as — though they overload themselves with European clothes during the daytime 

 — they seldom sleep under their rugs, excepting in the cold season of the year. 



Fur rugs were very scarce and valuable before the white man destroyed the 

 wild dogs, the natural enemies of the opossum and kangaroo, as it took a year to 

 collect opossum kins sufficient to make one. The ring-tailed opossums were 

 more plentiful than the common kind, but the skins were less esteemed. Rugs 

 were also made of the skins of the wallaby and of the brush kangaroo, which 

 are likewise inferior to the common opossum. A good rug is made of from fifty 

 to seventy skins, which are stripped off the opossum, pegged out square or 

 oblong on a sheet of bark, and dried before the fire, then trimmed with a reed 

 knife, and sewn together with the tail sinews of the kangaroo, which are always 

 pulled out of the tail, and carefully dried and saved for thread. Previous to 

 sewing the skins together, diagonal lines, about half-an-inch apart, are scratched 

 across the tiesh side of each with sharpened mussel shells. This is done to make 

 them soft and pliable. The only addition to this kind of ornamentation is 

 occasionally the figure of an emu in the centre skin of the rug. It may be stated 

 that, although many of the opossum rugs of the aborigines are now ornamented 

 with a variety of designs, some of which are coloured, nothing but the simple 

 pattern previously described, with the occasional figure of an emu, was used 

 before the an-ival of the white man. The figures of human beings, animals, and 

 things, now drawn by the natives, and represented in works on the aborigines of 

 the colony of Victoria as oi-iginal, were unknown to the tribes treated of, and are 

 considered by them as of recent introduction by Europeans. 



