346 AUSTRALIANS. 



no clothes. Indeed they appear to be entirely without any 

 sense of shame, and many of their habits are like those of 

 beasts. They have no idea of a Supreme Being, no religion, 

 nor any belief in a future state of existence. After death, 

 the corpse is buried in a sitting posture. When it is sup- 

 posed to be entirely decayed, the skeleton is dug up, and 

 each of the relations appropriates a bone. In the case of a 

 married man, the widow takes the skull and wears it sus- 

 pended by a cord round her neck.* 



They have no dogs, nor any domestic animals, unless, 

 indeed, their poultry may be regarded as such. 



The Australians. 



The natives of Australia were scarcely, if at all, farther 

 advanced in civilisation than those of the Andaman Islands. 

 The "houses" observed- by Captain Cook "at Botany 

 Bay, where they were best, were just high enough for a 

 man to sit upright in; but not large enough for him to 

 extend himself in his whole length in any direction : they 

 were built with pliable rods about as thick as a man's finger, 

 in the form of an oven, by sticking the two ends into the 

 ground, and then covering them with palm leaves and broad 

 pieces of bark ; the door is nothing but a large hole at one 

 end." Further north, where the climate was warmer, the 

 huts were even less substantial, and being completely open 

 on one side, scarcely deserve even the name of huts, and 

 were little more than a protection against the wind. Finally, 

 the natives observed by Dampier near C. Leveque, on the 

 north-west coast, seem to have had no houses at all. Round 

 their dwelling-places Captain Cook observed " vast heaps of 

 shells, the fish of which we supposed had been their food."t 

 Captain Grey also describes similar shell-mounds, f some of 



* Mouatt, I.e. p. 327. t First Voyage, vol. iii., p. 598. 



J I.e. vol. i., p. 110. See also King's Australia, vol. i., p. 87. 



