18 
BELLENDEN-KER BLACKS. 
The blacks on tlie Bellenden-Ker ranges are about the same in 
general appearance and habits as the coast range blacks from Cardwell 
to Cooktown. As a rule they are short and wiry, with good chest 
development, thin legs, often slightly curved, and surprisingly small 
hands and feet. The gins frequently have hands no larger than those 
of a little girl of ten years of age. The small feet of both sexes upset 
the theory that walking barefooted enlarges the feet. They possess 
astonishing powers of endurance, and will walk incredible distances 
over rough country, carrying fifty or sixty pounds on their heads. 
Their food is chiefly vegetarian, varied occasionally by the flesh of 
the wallaby, the tree-climbing kangaroo, fish, birds, eggs, and three 
or four varieties of opossums. The koa nut, and other large nuts not 
yet botanically named, are the chief articles of diet. Some of the 
nuts and roots they eat are poisonous in their raw state, and these are 
pounded up and placed in dilly-bags in running water for a couple of 
days to have the poisonous principle washed out. Of edible nuts of 
various kinds they have an unlimited supply. In pursuit of tree- 
climbing animals they display an agility probably unsurpassed in the 
world, and probably not rivalled by any other Australian blacks. It 
would severely tax the reader's credulity to describe how these natives 
take a vine and run up the tallest trees, walk on to others across the 
branches, and descend sometimes a considerable distance from the 
starting point. Their main camps are always built on some healthy 
dry situation, beside or very near a running stream. These are the 
" wet weather camps," where they remain during the wet season, and 
store large supplies of nuts. 
The blacks of this district vary in colour from a sooty black to 
a light bronze. Perhaps in no part of Australia is the Semitic type 
so startlingly distinct as among the tribes between Townsville and 
Princess Charlotte Bay. Tou see men and women who, apart from the 
colour, might be regarded as recent arrivals from Jerusalem. This is 
a deep and interestiug problem for the Australian anthropographist. 
We saw no camps higher than 2,000 feet, and very rarely any 
above 1,000 feet. These camps on high altitudes are only temporary, 
and usually consist of a few bent boughs covered over by fern or palm 
leaves. At certain times they go up the mountains after the " uiappee," 
the tree-climbing kangaroo, but never remain long. The nuts they 
chiefly live on are only found on the flats and in the valleys. There 
is little or no food on the mountains. On Bartle Frere we saw where 
tree grubs had been cut out at 3,000 feet, probably by Palmerston's 
boys. The blacks appear to shun Bellenden-Ker, there not being the 
faintest trace of them on any part of the mountain above 1,400 feet, 
except on Mount Toressa, where a clearly defined track crosses the 
spur at over 2,000 feet. 
On Barnard's Spur, at 1,600 feet, there are three rows of holes 
dug out of the hard gravel, nine in each row. Each hole is about 
three feet deep, open below, with an arch connecting them at the top. 
These holes have been used in limes gone by in some corroboree or 
religious ceremony, but I never saw them anywhere else. All these 
blacks are cannibals of a particularly bad tj-pe. They kill and eat their 
women and children, and occasionally they kill and eat their men. It 
is possible the custom arises out of an irrestrainable craving for flesh 
