DESCRIPTION OF THE NATIVES. 53 
to appear troublesome. Their manners were those of a 
quiet and inoffensive people, and their appearance in some 
measure prepossessing. The old men had lofty foreheads, 
and stood exceedingly erect. The young men were cleaner 
in their persons, and were better featured than any we had 
seen, some of them having smooth hair and an almost Asiatic 
cast of countenance. On the other hand, the women and 
children were disgusting objects. The latter were much 
subject to diseases, and were dreadfully emaciated. It is 
evident that numbers of them die in their infancy for want 
of care and nourishment. We remarked none at the age of 
incipient puberty, but the most of them under six. In 
stating that the men were more prepossessing than any we 
had seen, I would not be understood to mean that they 
differed in any material point either from the natives of 
the coast, or of the most distant interior to which I had 
been, for they were decidedly the same race, and had the 
same leading features and customs, as far as the latter could 
be observed. The sunken eye and overhanging eyebrow 
the high cheek-bone and thick lip, distended nostrils, the 
nose either short or acquiline, together with a stout bust and 
slender extremities, and both curled and smooth hair 
marked the natives of the Morumbidgee as well as those of 
the Darling. They were evidently sprung from one com- 
mon stock, the savage and scattered inhabitants of a rude 
and inhospitable land. In customs they differed in no 
material point from the coast natives, and still less from 
the tribes on the Darling and the Castlereagh. They ex- 
