238 On the Condition and Prospects 



of the district and the age of the deceased. One process is by simple 

 burial ; another, the burning of the body ; a third, drying the body 

 in the sun. The lamentations for the dead are frequently prolonged 

 beyond the time of burial, and the cries of the women may be heard 

 by the traveller during the midnight hours, as they issue with strange 

 and varied effect from the lonely woods.* 



Amongst these wandering; tribes, it is curious to find that the rite 

 of circumcision is practised, and, to all appearance, very generally, 

 throughout Australia. Dr Leichardt, in his Journal, mentions that 

 all the aboriginal tribes that were met with by his party around the 

 Gulf of Carpentaria, practised this rite. It is also practised by the 

 aborigines of the Colony of South Australia, which is situated at the 

 opposite part of the country.-f Cannibalism does not appear to pre- 

 vail extensively throughout Australia ; it exists in some of the tribes.]: 



8. General Character, and Degree of Aptitude for Employment 

 and Civilisation. 



The qualities and capabilities of the aboriginal mind are the subject 

 of considerable diversity of opinion. By those who have most ex- 

 perienced its workings, the aptitude for civilised life, and the per- 

 ception of moral obligations are in general portrayed in very dis- 

 couraging colours. There is, indeed, with the aborigines, a facility 

 of imitation of European manners and habits, united to a simplicity 

 and docility of character, arising actually from a prostration of spirit 

 and quiescence of the higher departments of the mind, that are ever 

 apt to give favourable impressions to an ardent disposition. § The 

 most tractable and the most promising, wearied out, after a period, by 

 the monotonous avocations of civilised life, or drawn aside from a 

 course of apparent well-doing by some ancestral custom or supersti- 



* The Port-Philip aborigines plaster the face and hair of the head with 

 white clay, when mourning for the death of a member of the family. 



t Mr Hull's " Remarks on the Probable Origin and Antiquities of the Abo- 

 rigines," (just published) page 16, where he describes the manner of perform- 

 ing the operation. 



X The aborigines of the southern parts of Australia are said to make use of 

 human skulls as drinking vessels, — a statement, however, which the writer has 

 not heard properly confirmed. Every gin or wife, it is stated, possesses this 

 description of calabash, which she usually fabricates herself; and the aborigines 

 appear to have practised the art of fashioning these vessels from time immemo- 

 rial. According to Professor Owen, this is the first instance of the habitual 

 conversion of a part of the human skeleton to a drinking vessel. 



§ Yet Mr Eyre describes the character of the Australian as frank, open, and 

 confiding, and, when once on terms of intimacy, marked by a freedom and 

 fearlessness that by no means countenance the impression so generally enter- 

 tained of his treachery. The apparent inconsistency here is in expecting from 

 the native the same rules of thought and motives of action that prevail with 

 civilised man, and regarding as treachery that conduct which is simply the re- 

 sult of a radically unchanged mind and habits. 



