FOOTNOTES:
[1] Published, all of them, by T. and W. Boone, London, to whom it is only just to acknowledge their kindness in permitting the use that has been made of these two publications in the first portion of the present Work.
[2] See Dr. Ullathorne’s Reply to Burton, especially at p. 5, where it appears that the judge was not quite impartial in one of his statements. Dr. Ullathorne himself has, in his 98 pages, contrived to crowd in at least twice as many misrepresentations as Burton’s 321 pages contain. But that is no excuse. The Romish Church may need, or seem to need, such support. The cause defended by Judge Burton needs it not.
[3] It is supposed that the word “Sin,” applied to the wilderness mentioned in Exodus xvi. 1, and also to the mountain of “Sinai,” has the same meaning, so that the appellation of “Bush” is no new term.
[4] Collins’ “Account of the Colony of New South Wales,” p. 11.
[5] This river must not be confounded with another of the same name in South Australia.
[6] See Oxley’s Journal, p. 299.
[7] See Mitchell’s Three Expeditions in Australia, vol. i. p. 38.
[8] An expedient used by the natives in Torres Strait, on the northern coast of Australia, for getting water, may here be noticed, both for its simplicity and cleverness. “Long slips of bark are tied round the smooth stems of a tree called the pandanus, and the loose ends are led into the shells of a huge sort of cockle, which are placed beneath. By these slips the rain which runs down the branches and stem of the tree is conducted into the shells, each of which will contain two or three pints; thus, forty or fifty placed under different trees will supply a good number of men.”—Flinders’ Voyage to Terra Australis, vol. ii. p. 114.
A different plan for improving the water that is hot and muddy, is thus detailed by Major Mitchell. To obtain a cool and clean draught the blacks scratched a hole in the soft sand beside the pool, thus making a filter, in which the water rose cooled, but muddy. Some tufts of long grass were then thrown in, through which they sucked the cooler water, purified from the sand or gravel. I was glad to follow their example, and found the sweet fragrance of the grass an agreeable addition to the luxury of drinking.
[9] “The most singular quality of this vapour or mirage, as it is termed, is its power of reflection; objects are seen as from the surface of a lake, and their figure is sometimes changed into the most fantastic shapes.”—Crichton’s Arabia, vol. i. p. 41.
[10] See two other curious accounts of the effects of mirage and refraction in Sturt’s Expeditions in Australia, vol. ii. pp. 56 and 171.
[11] The artless description of this sad discovery, given by one of the natives who accompanied the party, may be not unworthy of the reader’s notice. “Away we go, away, away, along the shore away, away, away, a long distance we go. I see Mr. Smith’s footsteps ascending a sand-hill, onwards I go regarding his footsteps. I see Mr. Smith dead. We commence digging the earth. Two sleeps had he been dead; greatly did I weep, and much I grieved. In his blanket folding him, we scraped away the earth. We scrape earth into the grave, we scrape the earth into the grave, a little wood we place in it. Much earth we heap upon it—much earth we throw up. No dogs can dig there, so much earth we throw up. The sun had just inclined to the westward as we laid him in the ground.“—Grey’s Travels in Western Australia, vol. ii. p. 350.
[12] See a like melancholy history of the death of Mr. Cunningham, in Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. i. p. 180, et seq. How thrilling must have been the recollections of his fellow-travellers in the wilderness at the simple incident thus related: “In the bed of the river, where I went this evening to enjoy the sight of the famished cattle drinking, I came accidentally on an old footstep of Mr. Cunningham in the clay, now baked hard by the sun. Four months had elapsed, and up to this time the clay bore the last records of our late fellow-traveller.”
[13] “A cluster of these trees would be an excellent beacon to warn mariners of their danger when near a coral reef, and at all events their fruit would afford some wholesome nourishment to the ship-wrecked seamen. The navigator who should distribute 10,000 cocoa-nuts amongst the numerous sand banks of the great ocean and Indian Sea, would be entitled to the gratitude of all maritime nations, and of every friend of humanity.”—Flinders’ Voyage to Terra Australis, vol. ii. p. 332.
[14] Although the basin of this river extends so far towards the east, on its westerly bank, that is, towards the interior, a desert country stretches itself to an unknown distance, from which it does not appear to receive any increase of its waters at all deserving of notice. From two hills, seventy miles apart, extensive views were gained of this western desert, in which no smoke was seen, indicating the presence of natives, nor even any appearance of trees; the whole country being covered with a thick bush or scrub. For the four winter months spent by Mitchell near the Darling, neither rain nor yet dew fell, and the winds from the west and north-west, hot and parching, seemed to blow over a region in which no humidity remained.
[15] So in Major Mitchell’s work, vol. i. p. 298; but the same author is quoted (more correctly it would seem from the map), by Montgomery Martin, as stating that “The Darling does not, in a course of three hundred miles, receive a single river.”—See Martin’s New South Wales, p. 82.
[16] By dry season, or wet season, in Australia, we are not to understand, as in England, a dry or wet summer, but a series of dry or wet years. At the very bottom of some of the dried-up lakes were found sapling trees of ten years’ growth, which had evidently been killed by the return of the waters to their long-forsaken bed.
[17] “I have myself no doubt that a large navigable river will yet be discovered, communicating with the interior of Australia.”—M. Martin’s New South Wales, p. 99.
[18] This remarkable animal, called also the Ornithorynchus, is peculiar to Australia, it has the body of a beast combined with the mouth and feet of a duck, is to be seen frequently on the banks of the Glenelg, and that unusually near the coast.
[19] Water is proverbially “unstable,” but what occurred to Major Mitchell’s party on the Yarrayne, may serve for a specimen of the peculiar uncertainty of the waters of Australia. In the evening a bridge across that stream had been completed, and everything was prepared for crossing it, but in the morning of the following day no bridge was to be seen, the river having risen so much during the night, although no rain had fallen, that the bridge was four feet under water, and at noon the water had risen fourteen feet,—a change that could only be accounted for by the supposed melting of the snow near the sources of the stream.
[20] See Professor Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i. Introduction, pp. 1, 2.
[21] See Mitchell’s Three Expeditions in Australia, vol. ii. p. 13.
[22] See Oxley’s Journal, pp. 103, 244.
[23] Another lake, called Walljeers, at no very great distance from this, was found, with its whole expanse of about four miles in circumference, entirely covered with a sweet and fragrant plant, somewhat like clover, and eaten by the natives. Exactly resembling new-made hay in the perfume which it gives out even when in the freshest state of verdure, it was indeed “sweet to sense and lovely to the eye” in the heart of a desert country.
[24] See Sturt’s Expeditions in Australia, vol. i. Dedication, p. 4.
[25] Sturt’s Expeditions in Australia, vol. ii. pp. 109, 110.
[26] The dimensions given in Captain Sturt’s map. The South-Australian Almanac states it to be sixty miles long, and varying in width from ten to forty miles.
[27] For the account of this voyage, see Sturt’s Expeditions in Australia, vol. ii. pp. 72-221.
[28] These particulars are taken from the South-Australian Almanac for 1841, pp. 68-73.
[29] See Wentworth’s Australasia, vol. i. p. 3.
[30] See Account of the Effects of a Storm at Mount Macedon, (Mitchell’s “Three Expeditions,” vol. ii. p. 283.)
[31] On one occasion the progress of the fire was against the wind. See this stated and explained by Major Mitchell, “Three Expeditions,” vol. i. p. 19.
[32] See Oxley’s Journals, pp. 184-7.
[33] Not quite so; they soon fell in with a few of the scattered wanderers of the bush.
[34] See the interesting account of Major Mitchell’s ascent to Mount William, the highest point of these hills.—Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. ii. pp. 171-181.
[35] Psalm cxxii. 8,9.
[36] One crime, in which the inhabitants of the neighbouring islands of New Zealand notoriously indulge, has been charged also upon the people of New Holland; but, since no mention of their cannibalism is made by those British travellers who have seen most of the habits of the natives, it is hoped that the charge is an unfounded one. See, however, M. Martin’s New South Wales, pp. 151-2, and the instance of Gome Boak, in Collins’ History of New South Wales, p. 285; and Sturt’s Expeditions in Australia, vol. ii. p. 222.
[37] Nay, our fellow-countrymen in the Australian colonies, can, by no means, endure a strict trial, even by their own rule of right. Take, for instance, the following very common case:—The kangaroo disappears from cattle-runs, and is also killed by stockmen, merely for the sake of the skin; but no mercy is shown to the natives who may help themselves to a bullock or a sheep. They do not, it is true, breed and feed the kangaroos as our people rear and fatten cattle, but, at least, the wild animals are bred and fed upon their land, and consequently belong to them.
[38] Speaking of a tribe which he found upon the banks of the Darling, Mitchell says, “The men retained all their front teeth, and had no scarifications on their bodies, two most unfashionable peculiarities among the aborigines.” (Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. i. p. 261.) The same intelligent traveller accounts for the custom of knocking out the teeth, by supposing it a typical sacrifice, probably derived from early sacrificial rites. The cutting off the last joint of the little finger of females, (he adds,) seems a custom of the same kind. It is a curious observation, that the more ferocious among the natives on the Darling were those tribes that had not lost their front teeth.—Vol. ii. p. 345, and vol. i. p. 304.
[39] This was not the fact, however, for Lieut. Collins found them in a different place, when he went to the spot early in the next morning.
[40] A less serious but even more effectual method of dispersing the natives, when they became troublesome, and would not quit the settlers’ camp at night, is mentioned by Mitchell. At a given signal, one of the Englishmen suddenly sallied forth wearing a gilt mask, and holding in his hand a blue light with which he fired a rocket. Two men concealed bellowed hideously through speaking-trumpets, while all the others shouted and discharged their fire-arms into the air. The man in the mask marched solemnly towards the astonished natives, who were seen through the gloom but for an instant, as they made their escape and disappeared for ever.—Mitchell’s Expeditions, vol. ii. p. 290.
[41] On a similar occasion, near the Darling, where the inhabitants are remarkable for their thievish habits, when a crow was shot, in order to scare them by its sudden death, the only result was, that, before the bird had reached the ground, one of them rushed forward at the top of his speed to seize it!—See Mitchell’s Expeditions, vol. i. p. 265.
[42] See Nehemiah viii. 14, 15.
[43] The men frequently indulge a great degree of indolence at the expense of the women, who are compelled to sit in their canoe, exposed to the fervour of a mid-day sun, hour after hour, chanting their little song, and inviting the fish beneath them to take their bait; for without a sufficient quantity to make a meal for their tyrants, who are lying asleep at their ease, they would meet but a rude reception on their landing.—Collins’ Account of Colony of New South Wales, p. 387.
[44] Playing at “stealing a wife” is a common game with the Australian children.
[45] These facts may account for the statement mentioned by Collins, of a native throwing himself in the way of a man who was about to shoot a crow, whence it was supposed that the bird was an object of worship, which notion is, however, contradicted by the common practice of eating crows, of which birds the natives are very fond.—See Collins’ Account of the Colony of New South Wales, p. 355.
Two young natives, to whom Mr. Oxley had given a tomahawk, discovered the broad arrow, with which it was marked on both sides, and which exactly resembles the print made by the foot of an emu. Probably the youths thought it a kobong, for they frequently pointed to it and to the emu skins which the party had with them.—See Oxley’s Journal, p. 172.
[46] The command in Deut. xxv. only extended to the case of eldest sons dying without children.
[47] The wild dog is also an object of chase, and its puppies are considered great dainties; but they are sometimes saved, in order to bring them up in a tame state, in which case they are taken by one of the elder females of the family, and actually reared up by her in all respects like one of her own children!
[48] It is a saying among the natives, “Where white man sit down, kangaroo go away.”
[49] Martin’s New South Wales, p. 131.
[51] “Among the few specimens of art manufactured by the primitive inhabitants of these wilds, none come so near our own as the net, which, even in its quality, as well as in the mode of knotting, can scarcely be distinguished from those made in Europe.”—Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. ii. p. 153.
[52] “Their only cutting implements are made of stone, sometimes of jasper, fastened between a cleft stick with a hard gum.”—Martin’s New South Wales, p. 147. “The use of the ‘mogo,’ or stone-hatchet, distinguishes the barbarous from the ‘civil’ black fellows, who all use iron tomahawks.”—Mitchell’s Three Expeditions in Eastern Australia, vol. i. p. 4.
[53] The kiley, or boomerang, is a thin curved missile, which can be thrown by a skilful hand so as to rise upon the air, and its crooked course may be, nevertheless, under control. It is about two feet four inches in length, and nine and a half ounces in weight. One side, the uppermost in throwing, is slightly convex, the lower side is flat. It is amazing to witness the feats a native will perform with this weapon, sometimes hurling it to astonishing heights and distances, from which, however, it returns to fall beside him; and sometimes allowing it to fall upon the earth, but so as to rebound, and leap, perhaps, over a tree, or strike some object behind.
[54] For instance, the natives on the river Bogan used the new tomahawks, given them by Major Mitchell, in getting wild honey—a food very commonly eaten in Australia—from the hollow branches of the trees. It seemed as though, in the proper season, they could find it almost everywhere. “To such inexpert clowns as they probably thought us,” continues the Major, “the honey and the bees were inaccessible, and indeed, invisible, save only when the natives cut the former out, and brought it to us in little sheets of bark; thus displaying a degree of ingenuity and skill in supplying wants, which we, with all our science, could not hope to attain.” They caught a bee, and stuck to it, with gum or resin, some light down of a swan or owl: thus laden, the bee would make for its nest in some lofty tree, and betray its store of sweets.—Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. i. p. 173.
[55] See Evidence of J. Barnes, Esq., in minutes of evidence taken before the Select Committee on Transportation, Quest. 417-422, pp. 48, 49.
[56] This remark, which is here applied to the people on the south coast of New Holland, does not hold good of all the natives of that vast island. On the authority of the same able navigator, Flinders, we learn that, in the northern part of the country, about Torres Strait, some of the tribes are very skilful in managing their long canoes. See an interesting account of the natives of the Murray Islands, in Flinders’ Voyage, vol. ii. pp. 108-110.
[57] See p. 99.
[58] See Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. i. p. 39.
[59] Flinders’ Voyage, vol. i. Introd. pp. 99, 100.
[60] “The natives do not allow that there is such a thing as a death from natural causes; they believe that were it not for murderers, or the malignity of sorcerers, they might live for ever.”—Grey’s Travels in Western Australia, vol. ii. p. 238.
[61] See Deut. xiv. 1, where the very spot is mentioned,—“between the eyes,”—which is always torn and scratched by the Australian female mourners.
[62] This disease made dreadful ravages among the natives about the same time as the colony in New South Wales was settled. “The recollection of this scourge will long survive in the traditionary songs of these simple people. The consternation which it excited is yet as fresh in their minds, as if it had been an occurrence of but yesterday, although the generation that witnessed its horrors has almost passed away. The moment one of them was seized with it, was the signal for abandoning him to his fate. Brothers deserted their brothers, husbands their wives, wives their husbands, children their parents, and parents their children; and in some of the caves of the coast, heaps of decayed bones still indicate the spots where these ignorant and helpless children of nature were left to expire, not so much, probably, from the virulence of the disease itself, as from the want of sustenance.”—Wentworth’s Australia, vol. i. p. 311. Third edition. See also Collins’ New South Wales, p. 383.
[63] See, however, a more pleasing picture of a native burying-place, in Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. i. p. 321.
[64] Martin’s New South Wales, p. 143.
[65] See p. 114.
[66] “In many places a log of wood, or a wide slip of bark, tied at either end, and stuffed with clay, is the only mode invented for crossing a river or arm of the sea, while in other parts a large tree, roughly hollowed by fire, forms the canoe.”—M. Martin’s New South Wales, p. 147.
[67] Flinders’ Voyage, vol. ii. p. 138.
[68] See a most remarkable instance of this in M. Martin’s New South Wales, pp. 156-158.
[69] Latterly, however, experience suggested to him what seems to have been a successful mode of concealment. See Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. ii. p. 271.
[70] It is even said, that persons bearing the same name with the deceased take other names, in order to avoid the necessity of pronouncing it at all. See Collins’ Acc. of Col. of N. S. Wales, p. 392.
[71] S. P. G. Report, 1842, p. 59.
[72] The half-caste children are generally put to death by the black husband, under the idea, it is said, that if permitted to grow up, they would be wiser than the people among whom they would live. These helpless innocents are destroyed, as though they were no better than a cat or dog: one farm servant of Mr. Mudie was in a great rage at the birth of a small infant of this description, and without any ceremony, only exclaiming, “Narang fellow,” which means, “Small fellow,” he took it up at once, and dashed it against the wall, as you would any animal. See Evidence before Transport. Com. 1837, p. 43.
[73] Against one of these missions Dr. Lang gives a sneer, and it may be a deserved one, though certainly expressed in unbecoming language; but the attentive reader of Dr. Lang’s amusing work on New South Wales will soon learn not to place too much stress upon all he says. See Lang’s New South Wales, vol. ii. chap. 7, p. 313.
[74] See Bishop of Australia’s Letter in S. P. G. Report for 1842, p. 53.
[75] Like most of his countrymen, Bennillong had two wives, but one of them, Barangaroo, had died, as it appears, before his departure for England. See page 154.
[76] On a similar occasion, Cole-be placed the living child in the grave with its mother, and having laid the child down, he threw upon it a large stone, after which the grave was instantly filled up by the other natives. Upon remonstrating with Cole-be, he, so far from thinking it inhuman, justified this extraordinary act by saying, that, as no woman could be found to nurse the child, it must have died a worse death than that to which he put it.—Collins’ Account of the Colony of New South Wales, p. 393.
[77] The custom of holding out green boughs, which is usually a sign of friendship among the Australians and other savage tribes, formed part of the ceremony of suppliants among the ancient Greeks. See Potter’s Antiquities of Greece, b. ii. c. 5.
[78] The difference in disposition between tribes not very remote from each other was often striking. Only three days’ journey behind, the travellers had left natives as kind and civil as any whom they had seen, and hitherto all the people on the Darling had met them with the branch of peace.
[79] Such are the words of Lieutenant Collins, from whose account of New South Wales the narrative is taken. When will Christians learn, in their intercourse with heathens and savages, to abstain from such falsehood and deceitful dealing?
[80] This generally appears to be rather a suspicious act;—to dance a corrobory is “a proposal these savage tribes often make, and which the traveller who knows them well will think it better to discourage.”—Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. ii. p. 269.
[81] Grey’s Western Australia, vol. ii. p. 370.
[82] It happened that the two French ships of discovery under the unfortunate La Perouse came into the harbour of Botany Bay just as the English were finally quitting it. The French stayed there nearly two months, and after they left that harbour they were never again seen by any Europeans, both vessels having been lost.
[83] See Lang’s New South Wales, vol. i. p. 23.
[84] See Barrington’s History of New South Wales, p. 171. See, too, another instance at p. 385.
[85] This conduct was so common, that, when provisions became scarce, the supply was issued twice in the week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
[86] The blame of these lax and unworthy notions must not fall on the laity alone; many of the clergy in those days deserve to have a full share of it; but while we see and lament the faults of that generation, we must not forget to look after those of our own, and to correct them.
[87] See Judge Burton on Religion and Education in New South Wales, p. 1.
[88] Certainly some of the means employed for the moral improvement of the convicts were very strange ones. For example, we are told, on one occasion, that some of them were “ordered to work every Sunday on the highway as a punishment!” See Barrington’s History of New South Wales, p. 184. See likewise, p. 246.
[89] In 1792, a chaplain came out with the New South Wales Corps; and in 1794, Mr. Marsden, a second chaplain, arrived in the colony. If any person is desirous of seeing how easily the faults and failings of individuals may be turned into arguments against a church, he has only to refer to Ullathorne’s Reply to Burton, chap i. “The Dark Age.”
[90] See the authorities quoted by Burton on Religion and Education in New South Wales, p. 6. According to this author, the chaplain’s name was Johnston, not Johnson, as Collins spells it.
[91] See 2 Kings v. and 1 Kings xix. 18. See likewise, in proof of the good conduct of some convicts, Collins’ Account of New South Wales, p. 42.
[92] See the Australian and New Zealand Magazine, No. 2, p. 107.
[93] The signal-colours were stolen within a year afterwards by some of the natives, who divided them among the canoes, and used them as coverings.
[94] According to Captain Tench, who is quoted by the Roman Catholic, Dr. Ullathorne, “Divine service was performed at Sydney only one Sunday in the month,” and “the Rev. Mr. Johnson was the best farmer in the country.” What truth there may be in these insinuations, or in the charge against Judge Burton of enlarging upon a Romish priest’s being a convict, while he disguises the same truth when it applied to an English clergyman, must be left to others better acquainted with the facts to determine. See Ullathorne’s Reply to Burton, p. 5.
[95] Things are now, happily, better ordered. “There are frequent instances of vessels arriving from England without having had a single death during the voyage” to Sydney.—Lang’s New South Wales, vol. i. p. 58.
[96] See “Bennillong,” in chap. vi. p. 151.
[97] Another instance of like folly is mentioned in Collins’ Account of New South Wales, p. 129.
[98] Religion, of course, concerns all equally, only the guilty and the wretched seem to be the last persons who can afford to reject its consolations, even in this world. However, the conduct of those in authority was pretty much on a par with that of the convicts, and it was only when one of the earlier governors was told of but five or six persons attending divine service, that “he determined to go to church himself, and stated that he expected his example would be followed by the people.” See Burton on Education and Religion in New South Wales, p. 7.
[99] It would appear almost as though some men will not see that churches are not built for clergymen to preach in, and live (or starve) upon the pew-rents, but for laymen to hear God’s word and join in His solemn worship.