303 



iiie that the natives of that district rely to some extent for their 

 flesh food supply upon domesticated cats, which are plentifully 

 found there in a feral state. (These must have come originally 

 from the inhabited parts of Western Australia, and consequently 

 have spread several hundred miles, having probably followed the 

 small lizards and birds they live upon.) Other flesh food of the 

 natives consists mainly of lizards and ant eggs (pup;e), as these 

 are found almost everywhere ; grass and other seeds form the 

 principal vegetable food. Kangaroos are very scarce, and other 

 marsupials almost absent ; emus are also very scarce. 



.5i!/i October, 1891.-— The morning was very windy, and tlie 

 afternoon boisterous; a smart shower of rain fell. The two 

 blacks fixed up a wurley, and towards evening the woman belong- 

 ing to the one with the very flat nose arrived with a boy about 

 fiv^ years old. The youngster looks fairly well fed, but has a 

 verv dilated stomach, which spoils his otherwise fine shape. The 

 woman, however, has a most wretched appearance, although not 

 badly shaped as far as legs and arms are concerned and taller 

 than any of the others I have seen near the station. She is 

 decidedly badly fed, showing the bones plainly through the skin, 

 particularly about the ribs ; she has no flesh, and between the 

 clavicle and shoulder^bone a deep hollow is visible. Her dis- 

 tended abdomen, much wrinkled as the result of child-bearing, is 

 covered with some flesh-red streaks, previously seen on several 

 natives, which seems to l)e a skin disease— (I have since been 

 told that these red marks are tlie result of burns from the lighted 

 bark they always carry) — and which extend up to the breasts 

 that hang down flabbily and much wn-inkled. Her face is also 

 already getting wrinkled, although she is scarcely more than 25 

 years old ; whilst her eyes are bleared by the smoke of the camp 

 fires. How the natives retain the keenness of sight they are un- 

 doubtedly possessed of is a wonder to me, considering that they 

 constantly indulge in sitting between smoke fires when in camp. 

 There was scarcely one of them I met whose eyes were not run- 

 ning, and the moisture which trickles down their cheeks is never 

 wiped away, no discomfort evidently being felt. This tribe is 

 certainly the most abject of all the natives of Australia T have 

 ever seen, even more wretched in appearance than the remnants 

 of the ykrra Yarra tribe that could still be seen 2.5 years ago in 

 the neighborhood of Melbourne. The one with the flat nose ac- 

 companied the black who was sent from the station to lead us to 

 this rockhole. His nose is the flattest imaginable ; it dilates just 

 above the lip to nearly an inch and a half and looks almost as if 

 it had no bone in it, but the septum is pierced to receive a 

 "kondel." He is a native of Hampton Plain, has the right 

 central incisor knocked out (the natives of the Fraser liange do 



