REMARKS ON THE NATIVES. 
105 
state of our salt provisions, we having barely sufficient to 
last to Mount Harris, at the rate of two pounds per week. 
The morning after .we returned from our excursion, a 
large party of natives, about seventy in number, visited the 
camp. On this occasion, the women and children passed 
behind the tents, but did not venture to stop. Most of the 
men had spears, and were unusually inquisitive and for- 
ward. Several of them carried fire-sticks under the in- 
fluence of the disease I have already noticed, whilst others 
were remarked to have violent cutaneous eruptions all over 
the body. We were pretty well on the alert ; notwithstand- 
ing which, every minor article was seized with a quickness 
that would have done credit to a most finished juggler. 
One of the natives thus picked up my comb and tooth- 
brush, but as he did not attempt to conceal them, they 
were fortunately recovered. After staying with us a short 
time the men followed the women. They appeared to be 
strangers who had come from a distance. 
The natives of the Darling are a clean-limbed, well- 
conditioned race, generally speaking. They seemingly 
occupy permanent huts, but their tribe did not bear any 
proportion to the size or number of their habitations. It 
was evident their population had been thinned. The cus- 
toms of these distant tribes, as far as we could judge, were 
similar to those of the mountain blacks, and they are essen- 
tially the same people, although their language differs. 
They lacerate their bodies, but do not extract the front 
teeth. We saw but few cloaks among them, since the 
