MORAL CHARACTERS. 249 



resented by him. Their behaviour to their women 

 is often very bad : they beat, and even spear them, 

 on the most trifling occasions. Different tribes vary 

 in the most extraordinary way in their friendliness 

 or hostility to strangers. They appear to be very 

 capricious, and always act on the whim, or impulse 

 of the moment, and for that reason are frequently 

 guilty of the grossest acts of treachery. They have 

 no power of perseverance, or of fixing the attention 

 long upon one subject, unless, perhaps, on the chase 

 of wild animals. 



It is useless for our present purpose to speak in 

 detail of the very many peculiar manners and cus- 

 toms of the Australians as described by various 

 authors. Such are the laws of marriage described 

 by Captain Grey, their ceremonial dances or corro- 

 bories, the initiatory ceremonies on admitting the 

 boys to the society of men when one of their front- 

 teeth is knocked out, their funeral ceremonies, and 

 others, for which I must refer the reader to the 

 works mentioned in the note.* I wish, however, 

 to observe, that so far as we know, all these manners 

 and customs are confined to the Australians. We 

 did not observe any traces of them among the 

 Torres Strait islanders, except, perhaps, some re- 

 semblance in their custom of preserving the bones 

 of the dead, but even this was uncertain. Not only 

 could we discover no traces of these Australian 



* The travels of Sir T. Mitchell, Captains Sturt, Grey, King, 

 and Stokes, and of Messrs. Eyre, Hodgkinson, Hodson, &c. 



