whole build of an Australian is notably fine and finished, I had almost said elegant. One of their most striking features is the low forehead and the strongly marked projection above the eyes, pointing to the fact that their powers of perception are good. All evidence leads to the same conclusion. Their eyes are always dark, with the whites of a dirty yellowish hue and with the capillaries very marked, a peculiarity that gives to the face a wild look. The nose is flat and triangular, very narrow above, so that the eyes are placed very close together. The fleshy nasal partition between the two nose-cavities (septum) is exceptionally strongly developed. The aborigines often perforate it and stick through it a peg as an ornament. My companions who, of course, had neither pockets nor pipe cases, were in some difficulty as to where they could best keep the clay pipes I had given them, but they soon found a safe place for their pipes by putting them, instead of the peg, through the hole in their nose. Sometimes I came across men with almost Roman noses, and you might believe, especially in Northern Queensland, that an interbreeding had occurred with Papuans, who, as is well known, are very proud of their big noses. The cheekbones are very prominent; the mouth is large, open, and in many cases anything but beautiful. The teeth are white, regular and very powerful, but on account of the coarse food and from being used for many purposes for which a white man would not think of using his teeth, e. g., biting off tough and thick branches, making tools, etc., they grow at last very sore and are worn down to the gums. The chin is tolerably short. Hair and beard are jet-black; the hair is not woolly but more or less wavy. Occasionally it is quite straight, but on the Herbert River this was a rare and exceptional case. When their hair begins to be troublesome to them by reason of its length, the blacks take a lighted brand from the fire and simply burn it off. Once at my headquarters I saw a young man cutting his hair with a blunt axe he had borrowed. Fragments of glass are used for the same purpose. Men and women wear their hair of equal length. As a rule, they are an ugly race, but now and then really good-looking individuals occur, more especially among the men, who, in general, have better figures. than the women. Yet even among the latter I have sometimes seen what I should call "black beauties." Their hands were small, their feet dainty and wellshaped, and their insteps so high that one would involuntarily ask where in the world they could have acquired this distinctive mark of aristocratic descent. Sometimes the young women have excellent figures; their skin is as delicate as velvet. When those black daughters of Eve laugh, showing their incomparable white teeth, and cast coquettish glances from under their wavy hair, hanging in quite the modern fashion over their brows, it may be understood that these women are not quite deprived of that influence ascribed by Goethe to the fair sex generally. They age very early, though. And I must confess I can hardly imagine any human being more ugly than these old women, crouching over the fire and rubbing their bony limbs. They seem to have no muscles left; their stomachs are prominent, their skin wrinkled, their hair grey and thin, their faces unusually ugly, so much the more as their eyes have almost disappeared. I often wondered why the men did not kill these old women who, I thought, were a great trouble to them, for I had seen that the Australian aborigines made short work with anything that gave them trouble or worry, but later I learned that the old women are rather useful than otherwise to the tribe. They are very clever in finding food, and not only do they support themselves and the weaker members of their sex, but I have also observed that they gave food to young men who were too lazy to find any for themselves. The sense-organs of the aborigines are well-developed, and their sight especially is unusually acute. They can see, at a height of sixty feet or more, the Australian bees, which are smaller than our domestic flies, enter their nests in the trees. They can also stand the vertical sunlight much better than we. If an Australian black is digging any animal out of the ground, a handful of the soil held to his nose is enough to tell him if the animal he is in search of is at home or not. When he is going through the woods, he will take up, as he passes along, a handful of earth or a leaf in order to tell by the smell if any animal has passed that way. The Australian aborigines are a healthy race and not very subject to disease, except in cases where they have become "civilized "-have taken to clothes-when disease begins among them. The Australian who, on the Herbert River, goes abroad quite unclothed, is, as I have already said, very proud of the possession of garments. But he regards them only as ornaments, and takes them off when they are most needed. I have seen Australian natives, in the greatest heat of summer, sweating in woollen jackets, while in the cold nights As a consequence, they will be sure to take them off. colds and chest complaints result. seen a black catch cold as long as he was living in his natural conditions. Climatic fevers are just as rare among them. I only saw one native down with fever, and he was "civilized"-wore clothes, caught cold to start with, and then took fever. The Herbert River blacks use no kind of medicine. The only thing they will sometimes do is to suck the blood from the part in pain, or to smear it over with their saliva. Toothache occurs now and then among these people. If it is a back-tooth that is giving pain, the patient gets another black to suck blood from his cheek, much as we use leeches. If it is a front-tooth a very radical cure is sometimes employed. A sharpened piece of wood is placed against the tooth, another fellow strikes it, and the tooth is knocked out. The aborigines are not so sensitive to pain as we, but they give in much quicker. If one of them gets ever so slight a cut on one of his toes, he is at once a universal object of commiseration, and keeps at home in camp. In my opinion the men live to a little over fifty, an age rarely attained by the women on account of the hard life they have to lead. Like all savage people the Australians are much given to the adornment and painting of their bodies. Sometimes, especially at their dances and fights, they besmear their whole body with red or yellow earth, or with powdered charcoal and fat, as if they were not black enough already. They also use cicatrices, or the scarring of their flesh, as an adornment for their bodies. For this purpose they make use of a sharp stone or a mussel-shell, with which they cut deep parallel lines all over their chest and abdomen. To prevent these wounds from healing, they sprinkle powdered charcoal or ashes into them, or sometimes they let ants run about in the wound, the result being that the lines will swell up in ridges as thick as a finger. This kind of ornamentation they consider very beautiful, and it is also indicative of a certain rank dependent upon the age. A little boy has no marks. In due time he is marked with lines. The number of these markings is increased as he grows older, and a crescentic line, with the points bent outwards, is drawn around the nipple. Only the men are thus decorated with marks of rank, while the women have some clumsy markings upon their breast and arms for decoration. Tattooing, is generally understood, by puncture of the skin with a pointed tool, is not employed by the Australians. The languages of the natives of Australia are as various and numerous as the tribes into which they are divided, although upon a closer examination, it appears that all these languages are in some measure related to each other so that they may properly be styled dialects derived from one common source. Thus, for instance, the word for eye, "mill," has a very similar form all over the continent, and the same is the case with the word for two. As yet no definite kinship between this Australian language and any language outside of Aus |