Mr. A. W. Howitt informs me that it was the custom of the natives of Gippsland to strip a sheet of bark, bend it across the middle, and set it up like a tent, and draw figures inside with charcoal, or perhaps red-ochre (nial). He says he saw such an one on the Wonnangatta River, when prospecting, in 1861. He thinks the figures drawn were those of men, emus, &c.
Mr. Hodgkinson saw, at the place prepared for the ceremonies of initiation, at the Macleay River, trees minutely tattooed and carved to such a considerable altitude that he could not help feeling astonished at the labor bestowed on the work.
When exploring in the Cape York Peninsula, Mr. Norman Taylor found in one place a flat wall of rock on which numerous figures were drawn. They were outlined with red-ochre, and filled in with white. A figure of a man was shown in this manner, and was spotted with yellow. And on the hardened-earth flats at the back of a beach were some regularly-drawn turtles cut out in outline, reminding him of the sculptured rocks on the South Head of Sydney, near Bondi, where men, sharks, fish, &c., are carved on the flat sandstone rocks.
Mr. Giles, in his explorations in Central Australia, found, at the camping-places of the natives, paintings of snakes, principally white, and imperfect shapes of hands, scratched, he thinks, by children with bits of charcoal. In the caves he found the same kiuds|kinds of ornamentation as those used by the natives of the Barrier Range and the mountains east of the Darling, namely, representations of the hand, generally colored red or black. These are made by filling the mouth with either charcoal or red-ochre, damping the wall where the mark is to be left, and placing the palm of the hand against it with the fingers stretched out, and then blowing against the back of the hand. When the hand is withdrawn, the space it occupied is clean, while the surrounding wall is black or red. One device represented a snake going into a hole. The hole was actually in the rock, and the snake was painted on the wall, and the spectator was to suppose that its head was just inside the hole. The body of the reptile was curled round and round from the tail, but the breadth was out of all proportion to its length. It was painted with charcoal-ashes, which had been mixed with emu-fat. In another part he saw again the rude figures of snakes, and hands, and devices for shields.[1]
On Depuch Island, one of the Forestier group, lying close to the north-west coast of Australia, Stokes discovered a large number of paintings, consisting of figures of birds, fishes, beetles, crabs, &c. The natives had removed the hard outer coating of the rocks, and thus obtained a smooth surface for their pictures. "Much ability," says Stokes, "is displayed in many of these representations, the subjects of which could be discovered at a glance. The number of specimens was immense, so that the natives must have been in the habit of amusing themselves in this innocent manner for a long period of time. I could not help reflecting, as I examined with interest the various objects represented—the human figures, the animals, the birds, the weapons, the domestic inci-
- ↑ Geographic Travels in Central Australia, 1872-4, by Ernest Giles.
