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[Page 178]
RANDOM ILLUSTRATIONS OF ABORIGINAL LIFE AND CHARACTER.
FOR the most part, the blackfellows who have not come under the pernicious influence of the lazy and drunken habits which generally prevail over those that live near the towns are well formed and agile. On the Barwan I have seen some of the race of Murri over 6 feet high. As a rule, the smallness of the calf of the leg, especially when contrasted with a fine muscular development about the shoulders, detracts from their appearance; but some are really splendid models of symmetry and strength. The aspect of a troop of them on the march, armed, and coloured with red and yellow ochre, recalls the designation of the "noble savage." The portrait which forms the frontispiece to this work is a true picture of the aboriginal man of Australia. Some more intellectual and
prepossessing countenances are to be found among them. But this man is an average specimen of thousands, without a touch of European culture or a scrap of adornment; but with muscular frames, and faces expressive both of energy and of some measure of thought.
There is a great variety in their countenances; some remind one of the Hindoo physiognomy; some are like the African negro; and it is no uncommon thing to find among the blackfellows at a station some bearing the names "Paddy" and "Sandy," given them in consequence of the characteristics of Irishmen and Scotchmen having been traced or fancied in their countenances. At Durundūrun, near the Glass-house Mountains, Moreton Bay, I found a family with decidedly Hebrew physiognomy. It is a curious coincidence that these men call their race by the name "Dān." At the Bora Station, belonging to Mr. Orr, between the Namoi and the Castlereagh, a blackfellow came up, among others, whom I at once declared to be a good representative of the Jack Tars of Old England. There was certainly as much of the thorough English expression in his frank and daring countenance as of the Irish and Scotch expression in others. And Mr. Orr told me of a feat done by this blackfellow worthy of a British seaman. He was in the service of two white men at a solitary hut, when a band of hostile natives came up to kill them. This brave fellow stood in the doorway, and declared that they should never kill the white men till they had first killed him; and his firmness defeated their attempt.