76 R. H. CAMBAGE AND H. SELKIRK. 



The drawings depict two circular areas enclosed by logs, 

 and connected by a somewhat sinuous passage about seventy 

 yards long, one area at least being about twenty yards in 

 diameter (Figure 1). The purpose of these enclosures is 

 made clear by the following note :— " Where the Natives 

 meet after a war with adverse tribes, to make peace." 



In Barron Field's Geographical Memoirs of New South 

 Wales (1825), reference is made (p. 70) to a circular pit, 

 about forty feet in diameter, being the scene of combat 

 witnessed by John Finnegan in 1823 between two native 

 women of different tribes, and also between two men at 

 Moreton Bay, while Thomas Pamphlet (Ibid., p. 78), when 

 speaking of an encounter brought about by one native 

 wishing to take satisfaction of another who had wounded 

 him sometime previously, stated that "the spot appointed 

 for the combat was a small ring, about twenty-five feet in 

 diameter, about three feet deep, and surrounded by a 

 palisade of sticks." The combat was witnessed by about 

 500 men, women and children. 1 



The rings depicted by Oxley, however, which were not 

 used for combat, but for making peaee, do not appear to 

 have been constructed as pits, as the two dots or small 

 inner circles within the smaller ring appear to represent 

 standing trees which were "fantastically crowned at the 

 summit." The drawings shown, Figure 2, are evidently 

 intended as diagrams giving details. 



1 Finnegan and Pamphlet, together with Richard Parsons and John 

 Thompson, left Sydney on the 21st March, 1823, in an open boat to bring 

 ceiar from the Five Islands (Illawarra). The boat being driven out to 

 sea by a gale of wind, they suffered inconceivable hardships, being twenty- 

 one days without water, during which time Thompson died. The others, 

 on the 16th April, landed on an island which they believed to be south 

 of Jervis Bay, but was really Moreton Island, from which they gained the 

 mainland, discovered the Brisbane River, and, except Parsons, were found 

 by Oxley when he arrived in Moreton Bay on the 29th November, 1823. 

 Finnegan and Pamphlet were living with the natives near Bribie Island, 

 but Parsons had gone north, as he thought in the direction of Sydney, 

 and was not h^ard of after. (Field's New South Wales, p. 89.) 



