354 BURIAL. NUMBERS. 



long, three wide, and five deep. At the bottom was a bed of 

 leaves, covered with an opossum-skin cloak, and with a stuffed 

 bag of kangaroo- skin for a pillow ; on this the body was laid 

 with its implements and weapons. Above the corpse were 

 strewn leaves and branches, and the hole was then filled up 

 with stones. Finally, the earth which had been removed 

 was put over the whole, making a mound eight or nine feet 

 high. According to D'Urville, the natives of New South 

 Wales bury the young, and burn the old.* Other tribes 

 dispose of their dead in other ways ; but none of them were 

 addicted to cannibalism as a matter of habit or choice, al- 

 though they were not unfrequently driven to it by the 

 scarcity of other food. 



No single fact, perhaps, gives us a more vivid idea of the 

 mental condition of these miserable savages, than the obser- 

 vation that they cannot count their own fingers not even 

 those of one hand. Mr. Crawfurdf has examined the nu- 

 merals of thirty Australian languages, "and in no instance 

 do they appear to go beyond the number four." Mr. Scott 

 Nind, indeed, has given an account of the Australians of 

 King George's Sound to which a vocabulary is annexed, 

 containing the numerals, which are made to reach the 

 number five. The term for this last unit, however, turns 

 out to be only the word "many." In fact, the word "five" 

 conveys to them the idea of a great number, as a " hundred " 

 or a " thousand " does to us. 



The Tasmanians. 



The inhabitants of Van Dieman's Land, were quite as 

 wretched as those of Australia. According to Captain Cook's 

 account they had no houses, no clothes, no canoes, no in- 

 strument to catch large fish, no nets, no hooks ; they lived 



* Yol i., p. 472. f Transactions of Ethn. Soc., New Series, vol. ii, p. 84. 



