n'offroient aucune espèce de tatouage; leur longue chevelure étoit réunie en un chignon poudré, d'une terre rouge dont les vieux avoient le corps frotté."[1]
Collins observed in New South Wales natives as black as the African negro, others of a copper or Malay color. Black hair was general, but some had hair of a reddish cast.[2]
Major Mitchell saw in some places "fine-looking men." Some of the men of the Bungan tribe had straight brown hair, others Asiatic features, much resembling Hindoos, with a sort of woolly hair. The natives of the Darling, however, were not pleasing. "The expression of their countenances," he says, "was sometimes so hideous, that after such interviews I have found comfort in contemplating the honest faces of the horses and sheep; and even in the scowl of the patient ox I have imagined an expression of dignity, when he may have pricked up his ears, and turned his horns towards these wild specimens of the 'lords of the creation.'"[3]
Lieut.-Col. Mundy found some well-made men amongst the natives of New South Wales. One man—the chief of a tribe, the only old man belonging to it—is thus described:—"He was of much superior stature to the others, full six feet two inches in height, and weighing fifteen stone. Although apparently approaching threescore years, and somewhat too far gone to flesh, the strength of 'the old Bull,' for that was his name, must still have been prodigious. His proportions were remarkably fine; the development of the pectoral muscles and the depth of chest were greater than I had ever seen in individuals of the many naked nations through which I have travelled. A spear laid across the top of his breast as he stood up, remained there as on a shelf. Although ugly, according to European appreciation, the countenance of the Australian is not always unpleasing. Some of the young men I thought rather well-looking, having large and long eyes with thick lashes, and a pleasant, frank smile. Their hair I take to be naturally fine and long, but from dirt, neglect, and grease, every man's head is like a huge black mop. Their beards are unusually black and bushy. … The gait of the Australian is peculiarly manly and graceful; his head thrown back, his step firm; in form and carriage at least he looks creation's lord—
'erect and tall,
Godlike erect, in native honor clad.'
In the action and 'station' of the black there is none of the slouch, the stoop, the tottering shamble, incident all upon the straps, the braces, the high heels, and pinched toes of the patrician, and the clouted soles of the clodpole white man."[4]
Many of the natives of the eastern seaboard, like those of the Murray in Victoria, are remarkably stout and strong. Mr. Hodgkinson found a fine specimen on the Bellingen, in Queensland:—"One man in particular had been pre-eminently remarkable (in outrages on whites) from his tallness and herculean proportions; the sawyers up the Nambucca had distinguished him
- ↑ Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes, 1800-4.
- ↑ English Colony in New South Wales, by Lieut.-Col. Collins, 1804.
- ↑ Interior of Eastern Australia, by Major (Sir Thomas) Mitchell, 1838.
- ↑ Our Antipodes, by Lieut.-Col. Mundy, 1857, p. 46.
