429 



Place. 



Months 





Years. 



Total 



Avge. fall 



Normal 











fall. 



per 



month. 



Ann. fall 



Hergott Springs 



12 





1888 



235 





20 



604 





(16 

 113 





1900-1 



254 





16 









1901-2 



78 





6 







9 





1915-6 



115 





13 





Mulloorina ... 



.. 12 





1888 



70 





6 



407 





24 





1891-3 



278 





12 







8 





1897-8 



47 





6 







J 10 

 114 





1900-1 



109 





11 









1901-2 



62 





4 









No 



later records 











(/) THE NATIVES. 



By Edgar R. Waite, F.L.S., Director South Australian 



Museum. 



There is little of interest to write about the aboriginals. 

 The older folk are dependent on the younger ones, who are 

 more or less attached to the stations, the men attending to 

 the stock and the women doing domestic work. Many of them 

 had been to the mission station, and declined to be photo- 

 graphed as ethnological subjects. Further afield they seldom 

 offered objection, but on the whole they are not of good 

 physique; absence of strenuous work, rendered unnecessary 

 by the receipt of Government rations, tending to obesity and 

 general flabbiness. 



Though more or less clothed by day for the purpose of 

 moving about the station precincts, we found that many of 

 them utterly discarded clothing for sleeping, and this practice 

 no doubt renders them liable to chills and attendant ills', 

 whereas those who never clothe are not so subject. Our native 

 guido, though wearing shirt and trousers by day, usually 

 scratched a hollow in the sand and lay down to sleep" in the 

 open, without a vestige of covering. The older people 

 frequently bask in the sunshine quite naked (pi. xxiv., fig. 1). 



Comparatively few children were seen, so that the once 

 populous Cooper Creek district will, within a few decades, 

 know the native no more. 



At a camp near Innamincka Head Station we saw 

 several very old natives, all blind, doubtless the result of 

 Trachoma, or sandy blight. The eye slits were invisible 

 owing to the presence of a regular row of flies, apparently 

 sipping the moisture exuded. All the natives seem to be very 

 tolerant of flies at their eyes. 



