The black man’s razor is a bivalved, sharp-edged shell, rather like a mussel, with which he tweaks out the hairs—a most painful proceeding, I should imagine. Needles and awls he makes from the leg-bones of the kangaroo, and nets and bags for hunting from the tendons of the larger animals; while he grinds his corn, as does the Indian, between two large stones, the lower one being very slightly hollowed out, and the upper—about the size of a man’s fist—rounded, and usually of a harder kind, a good nether-stone being often carried for many miles.
All fighting laws among the aborigines are asceremonious and well arranged as those of any medieval tourney, while the marriage laws are exceedingly stringent. A man may not marry a woman of his own family name, which is usually that of some plant or animal, while tribes in some districts are carefully divided into two “phraties,” to guard against possible intermarriage, each half possessing a different “kobong.” Neither will he, except under pressure of the direst necessity, kill an animal that bears that name, for it is his “kobong,” and so sacred to him that, even if he is starving, he will not touch it while it is asleep, but gives it every possible chance of escape.
Some people believe that the black fellow has no religion. This, I really believe, is chiefly owing to the general tendency to so name only our own particular belief, lumping all the others together under the name of “superstition.” “Orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy is another man’s doxy,” as Bishop Warburton once said. Mr. Ramsey Smith, head of the South Australian Department of Public Health, declares the Australian native to be saturated with religion, and, truly, if we would comprehend anything of a people’s beliefs, we must know everything that there is to be known of themselves, their surroundings, and their lives. There is a spiritual religion which strives for purity and goodness for its own sake alone. But most religions, including that of the ancient Jews, havebeen mainly based on a fear of consequences, which governs alike both civil and personal character. The laws of the black fellow—in spite of the name he has for being at once dirty, primitive, and debased—are, particularly in dealing with all matters of sanitation, even more stringent than those of the Jew, and though the reason he will give you for destroying every scrap that remains over from any animal he has eaten will be that—if an enemy should get hold of it, he would cause him serious injury, or even loss of life; still, in all probability, it was the law of cleanliness which first gave rise to such a belief.
The black fellow’s Bible is his stock of fables, repeated from mouth to mouth, as were the tales of Homer. Most of these legends enforce some lesson or moral, though how much of the actual tales themselves is believed, and how much is recognized as being old wives’ fables, especially concocted to point a moral, it would be hard to say. But this we do know: that the black fellow’s gods are numerous, consisting alike of good and bad spirits, round which are hung legends of the Deluge; of the manner in which the sky is supported; of the origin of the sun—which is a woman—and the moon—which is a man—and why they wax and wane; of the meaning of comets, stars, and eclipses; while his entire moral code is embodied in a series of elaborate laws and ceremoniesin connection with phratries and totems, child betrothal, infanticide, and marriage,—in connection with which the laws are extraordinarily strict—corroborees and initiation, from which last ceremony all the women of the tribe are warned away—under the penalty of death—by the “bullroarer,” or “bummer.”
Mr. Rowland, in his book “The New Nation,” tells an amazing story, which I cannot resist repeating here, from the simple fact that it shows so plainly the way that the wits of the black fellows are, in some cases, more than equally balanced against those of the white. In the time of Governor Arthur a drive of natives was attempted, so that they might be separated from the white populace in camps under close supervision, and the constant evils of massacre and outrage between the two races be put an end to. Some 2,000 soldiers, convicts, and settlers were engaged for the task, and a cordon was slowly drawn, in the toils of which it was implicitly believed that every single native in the district must of necessity be confined. Some £30,000 were spent over this human net, with the idea that, once drawn, all the troubles with the natives would be for ever at an end. At last, after many days, the sides of the vast semicircle closed one upon another, and amid the breathless excitement of the entire colony the catch was counted—one boy and one man, at £15,000 a head.
It is odd, in the face of the strenuous All-White Australian policy of to-day, to find that at one time—in South Australia, at least—there was an idea that all the difficulties between the blacks and whites could be settled by intermarriage—an idea even then, I should imagine, held only by the minority, though, unfortunately, they happened in this instance to be representatives of the Crown—and a regulation was actually passed by which any white man marrying a lubra got a grant of ten acres of otherwise free ground. Just about as much as a lubra could work, I suppose they thought. Nowadays marriage with the blacks is not even thought of—much less provided for—though any tampering with a black woman on the part of a white is regarded as a criminal offence, and is punishable by imprisonment; while the sooner all lubras in the Northern Territory are separated into strictly guarded native settlements, the better, judging from appalling medical reports which occasionally reach the public ear.
In Victoria nowadays the black fellows are few, and ravaged by the diseases which the white man has brought to them, and by smallpox and consumption. But in Queensland and the Northern Territory they are more numerous, more virile, and more like their old selves, and therefore it is to the people who have known them in these places that we must turn to satisfy any curiosityor human interest that we may feel; for humanity to Mrs. Æneas Gunn’s beautiful and sympathetic books, “The Little Black Princess” and “The Never, Never Land,” and for more exact and scientific knowledge to Professor Gregory’s book, “The Dead Heart of Australia,” among many others.
Nowadays one may live among the Victorian forests and never even see a black fellow, but the names that he has given mountain, district, and river still remain, like a mocking echo of his voice. The Barambogie, the Buckrabanyule, the Barramboot, the Bulla-Bulla, the Keil-warra, the Koorooyugh among the mountains; the Benambra Creek, the Marraboor, the Kororoit, the Kiewa, the Toonginbooka, and the Wonnangatta among the rivers; the Durdidwarrah, the Corangamite, the Koreetnung, and the Turang-moroke among the lakes, being a few of the soft-syllabled words which rise at random to my mind as I write, while from river bank, mountain, and forest, that the Black Fellow has thus christened, out of the tangled scrub and down from the tall gum-trees, peer the bright-eyed wistful Bush beasts, as if wondering why the world has so changed, leaving them there still unaltered, the very flotsam of time.
Even now, by good fortune, we may still come across the remains of some of the forest sanctuaries of the aborigines, breaking through the wall offorest trees which surrounds them, and stepping into their silent places with a sudden sense of intensest pity for a dying race, and awe and reverence for a life and faith of which we can have no true conception.
In some parts of Australia, more particularly in Northern Queensland, these are to be found, in the very heart of the Bush—surrounded by high walls, of dense forest growth—curious circular clearings, too completely denuded of undergrowth and too symmetrical in shape to be for one moment regarded as merely accidental. These are the ancient “bora,” or “corroboree,” grounds of the aborigines, formed, for the most part, long before Captain Cook—or any other white man—set foot in the continent, though to this day the remnants of the dying race meet there periodically to conduct their most important ceremonies and hold their most solemn parliaments—or, to use a more precise word, conclaves, for mere speech occupies a far more restrained and less important place in such meetings than it does in the political discussions of the whites. These clearings have been in existence for so long that even the very oldest among the aboriginals has never even heard of their beginnings; and though apparently they can always be easily located, no regular cut track is found to lead to them. To this day they are kept absolutely clear, save in an instance where all those peoplewhose sanctuaries they represent have died out or been hopelessly scattered—and it is another example of the resourcefulness and industry of the black fellow—when any of his cherished beliefs are at stake—that he should have been able so successfully to grapple with all the quick-springing mass of undergrowth which leaps to life, almost in a night, in such places.
What mysterious ceremonies, what awful initiations, have been performed in these “bora” it needs an authority on such things to say. But surely there were never such sanctuaries apart from the sacred groves of Greece, never such temples built by hand, provocative at once of such peace and such reverence—silent, open places of the illimitable forests, carpeted over by the native grasses, which will only grow where the clear light of the sun can penetrate—fit emblem, indeed, of all the virtues.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
[232]In Europe the density of the population, or number of persons to the square mile, is 112.58; in Australia it is 147.
[298]At the first colonization of Victoria, the number of blacks was estimated to amount to 15,000.