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food, in a violent reaction against prolonged vegetarianism, and all 
Australian tribes have from time to time been addicted to the same 
practice. On many occasions I have seen conclusive proofs of 
cannibal feasts. They are in no way ashamed of the habit, and will 
sometimes chat about it in quite a jocular manner, and tell you what 
a great delicacy is a roast foot or a grilled hand. No women or boys 
are allowed to witness or join in the feast. When a gin is to be 
killed she is taken away to some secluded spot, one man seizes and 
crosses her hands in front, and another hits her on the back of the 
head with a nulla or a wooden sword. Then she is disembowelled, and 
cut up and roasted. Infidelity in a gin is punished by death. If a 
native falls from a tree or is seriously injured, he is generally killed and 
eaten. Their code of morality is stringent, but their social habits are 
indescribable, and their mode of living simply unimaginable. Plenty 
to eat is the one sole study of their existence. It forms the subject 
of their dreams by night, and stimulates all their faculties during the 
day. Occasionally they have compulsory fasts, followed by a period 
of excessive gormandising, and this accounts for the abnormally 
distended stomachs so frequently seen in all sexes, especially the women 
and children. The coast blacks have an unlimited supply of fish, and 
this they generally kill by the spear, with which they are very expert. 
The chief weapon of the mountain blacks is the wooden sword, a 
huge, unwieldy piece of flat wood, three feet long by four and five 
inches wide. They also throw stones with great dexterity. A myall 
armed with stones is about as formidable as one armed with spears. 
On the Eussell Diggings large numbers of blacks have been acting as 
prospectors for the diggers, and were also very useful in carrying 
supplies to localities where it was impossible to take a packhorse. 
About 200 have also come in from time to time and worked on the 
Johnstone Eiver plantations. Several diggers have been killed by the 
Russell blacks, who have also murdered three or four settlers on the 
Eussell and Mulgrave. The blacks doubtless had their own grievances, 
and attempted to redress them according to their own theory of the 
wild justice of revenge. The whites killed were in all cases men 
ignorant of the nature of the savage, and blindly and foolishly 
credulous in their unreasoning faith in the wild children of the jungle. 
They became familiar with the blacks, trusted them implicitly, gave 
them the tempting opportunity to kill, and the savage simply obeyed 
his natural impulse, and allowed the demon of destructiveness to 
control him under the suddenly favourable conditions. 
It is the same old old story of death being the penalty too often 
paid by those who trust their lives to the delusion that the human 
savage differs essentially and radically in his nature from that of 
any other wild animal. 
The tribal distinctions of these blacks are incomprehensible, and 
madness itselE lies in the struggle to comprehend their confusion of 
tongues. A space of twenty miles will separate two tribes with different 
dialects. Each tribe has its own district, and dare not go beyond. 
There are blacks on the Eussell who never saw the sea except 
from the top of a mountain, and have lived all their lives within 
sixteen miles of the beach. If they cross their defined boundary they 
are killed, if not strong enough to kill the other party. They are 
never at a loss for a cause of quarrel which will afford a chance to 
kill and eat somebody. But in discussing the ferocity of the wild 
