THE ABOEIGINES OF AUSTRALIA. 477" 



being asked what they intended doing with it, they replied — 

 " Plenty bery good dog butter." So, with a piece of glass bottle 

 they performed a post mortem, cle\erly extracting the internal 

 fat and deliberately smeared their heads, faces, and necks with the 

 offensively pungent mess. So strong was the disgusting scent 

 that we rushed from their presence into the house, closing windows 

 and doors. I do not relate the foregoing as something new, for 

 hundreds of persons have seen the like. I only mention it here 

 to show how I was Hrst introduced to the noble Australian savage. 

 This practice of covering the body with fatty substances is com- 

 mon to all savage races, and is intended as a protection against 

 the bad effects of extreme heat and of extreme cold, as well as 

 furnishing a covering through which the troublesome insect finds 

 it difficult to reach with its proboscis, the rich juices which lie 

 under the skin of — well, even an Australian native. 



I have lived to see an aborigine greedily devour a crust of 

 wheaten bread ; but, I can assure the reader that, at the time of 

 which I now write, if some bread and meat were given to them 

 they would consume the meat, but on getting a little distance 

 from the house, after smelling the bread they would deliberately 

 throw it away. At that time also they would not eat bacon nor 

 besmear themselves with its fat ; and pork was their peculiar 

 aversion. I can say with confidence that, up to my latest acquaint- 

 ance with them, never once did I see them eat, in any form, the 

 flesh of a pig. It was evidently naturally offensive to them. 



We soon left the little city of Adelaide, for it was really little 

 then, and not many thousand people in the whole colony. 

 There was no bishop ; Sir Henry Young was Governor. Our 

 temporary abode was to the east of Kensington, and not much 

 more than a mile to the north of Green Hill. Kensington could 

 boast of only one public-house or shanty, which was kept by an 

 African, and one small place of worship in which officiated a Mr. 

 Strongman. Another gentleman conducted the Sunday School, 

 and, I regret to say, that on one Sabbath morning the curiosity of 

 some natives prompted them to look in at the door, the said super- 

 intendent drove them away and shut the door in their faces. 

 There was a store in this village and but a very few other houses. 

 The mainstay of the place was the local brickyards and the sawing 

 and splitting of timber on the Mount Lofty tiers. Our place lay 

 near one of the tracks used by the aborigines in passing backwards 

 and forwards from the Adelaide Plains to the Bremer and the 

 Murray River. As population increased and the Adelaide natives 

 abandoned hunting for a vagrant begging life, they but seldom 

 passed over the eastern ranges ; but the Murray blacks would still 

 come down, perhaps twice a year. These blacks, even in the 

 earliest days of the white settlement, were a race far superior in 



