tomed to the want of it, and the airing of a grave by kindling a fire within it is a very important ceremony at a funeral. The same love of warmth creates an aversion to early rising, and natives are seldom seen abroad until the sun has been one or two hours above the horizon.
In wet weather it is usual to carry in the hand, beneath the kangaroo skin, a piece of smouldering wood, which compensates in some sort for the want of a flannel waistcoat, and enables them to light a fire at a moment's notice. Khourabene also had a plan on cold nights of lying down, rolled up in his furs, upon the ashes of a raked-out fire. He explained to my husband, who once very nearly fell over him outside our house where he had tucked himself up in this manner for the night, that the advantage of thus going to bed was twofold, being no less good for warmth than for concealment, especially when passing the night in a strange place, where the keeping up of a fire after dark might attract the notice of unfriendly natives. Each tribe possesses a territory of its own, and each family of the tribe has its own especial tract of land within that territory, together with the springs of water thereupon; here he can light his fire and build his hut without fear of molestation; it is in fact his paternal estate, so that the word "fire" conveys to an Australian the same meaning of fatherland or birthplace as the European idiom of "hearth,"[1] and is used by the aborigines in the same sense.
The Australian women are less good-looking than the men, partly perhaps because amongst a thick-lipped race
- ↑ I am indebted for this information to Bishop Salvado's 'Memorie Storiche dell' Australia.'
