Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia Volume I Part 26

A very remarkable instance of coincidence in this custom with regard to the dead will be found in a subjoined extract from a letter sent to me by an officer of the Beagle, together with a skeleton which he had found at Cygnet Bay. The skeleton has been presented to the Royal College of Surgeons:

The skeleton was found enveloped in three pieces of papyrus bark, on a small sandy point in Cygnet Bay. All the bones were closely packed together, and the head surmounted the whole. It did not appear to have been long interred. They had evidently been packed with care. All the long bones were undermost, and the small ones were strewed in among them.

The head was resting on its base, face across.

Three natives were close to the place when we first landed: the eldest of the party went up to the spot immediately after I had removed the bones; he turned up the bark with his foot, and did not appear to show the slightest symptom of uneasiness. They were for some days among the watering party on very friendly terms.

CAVES. DRAWINGS. TOMBS.

As I never, during my subsequent travels in Australia, saw anything at all resembling the painted caves which I have described in the ninth chapter, I shall here add some observations on the subject, which I could not have there detailed without too great an interruption to the narrative.

Two other instances of Australian caves which contain paintings have been recorded. The first is by Captain Flinders and the second by Mr.

Cunningham in King's voyage.

PAINTINGS AT CHASM ISLAND.

The caves found by Flinders were in Chasm Island, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and are thus described:*

In the steep sides of the chasms were deep holes or caverns undermining the cliffs; upon the walls of which I found rude drawings, made with charcoal, and something like red paint, upon the white ground of the rock. These drawings represented porpoises, turtles, kangaroos, and a human hand; and Mr. Westall, who went afterwards to see them, found the representation of a kangaroo, with a file of thirty-two persons following after it. The third person of the band was twice the height of the others, and held in his hand something resembling the waddy or wooden sword of the natives of Port Jackson.

(*Footnote. Flinders' Voyages volume 2 page 158.)

PAINTINGS AT CLACK'S ISLAND.*

(*Footnote. North-east coast of Australia.)

The second instance is taken from Mr. Cunningham's ma.n.u.scripts and is contained in the following extract:*

The south and south-eastern extremes of Clack's Island presented a steep, rocky bluff, thinly covered with small trees. I ascended the steep head, which rose to an elevation of a hundred and eighty feet above the sea.

The remarkable structure of the geological features of this islet led me to examine the south-east part, which was the most exposed to the weather, and where the disposition of the strata was of course more plainly developed. The base is a coa.r.s.e, granular, siliceous sandstone, in which large pebbles of quartz and jasper are imbedded: this stratum continues for sixteen to twenty feet above the water: for the next ten feet there is a horizontal stratum of black schistose rock which was of so soft a consistence that the weather had excavated several tiers of galleries; upon the roof and sides of which some curious drawings were observed, which deserve to be particularly described. They were executed on a ground of red ochre (rubbed on the black schistus) and were delineated by dots of a white argillaceous earth, which had been worked up into a paste. They represented tolerable figures of sharks, porpoises, turtles, lizards (of which I saw several small ones among the rocks) trepang, starfish, clubs, canoes, water gourds, and some quadrupeds, which were probably intended to represent kangaroos and dogs. The figures, besides being outlined by the dots, were decorated all over with the same pigment in dotted transverse belts. Tracing a gallery round to windward, it brought me to a commodious cave or recess, overhung by a portion of the schistus, sufficiently large to shelter twenty natives whose recent fire places appeared on the projecting area of the cave.

Many turtles' heads were placed on the shelves or niches of the excavation, amply demonstrative of the luxurious and profuse mode of life these outcasts of society had, at a period rather recently, followed. The roof and sides of this snug retreat were also entirely covered with the uncouth figures I have already described.

As this is the first specimen of Australian taste in the fine arts that we have detected in these voyages it became me to make a particular observation thereon: Captain Flinders had discovered figures on Chasm Island, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, formed with a burnt stick; but this performance, exceeding a hundred and fifty figures, which must have occupied much time, appears at least to be one step nearer refinement than those simply executed with a piece of charred wood. Immediately above this schistose is a superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s of sandstone which appeared to form the upper structure of the island.

(*Footnote. King's Australia volume 2 page 25.)

PAINTINGS IN THE YORK DISTRICT.

There is a third instance of a cave with a figure in it in the district of York, in the settlement of Swan River; but in this case the species of circle which is drawn on the cave, or rather sc.r.a.ped into it with a piece of stone, may represent anything or nothing; in fact it is no more than any idle or thoughtless savage might have executed, without any fixed design whatever. The only other vestige of drawing contained in the cave is evidently the mere impression of a hand, which has been rubbed over with the red paint with which the natives are in the constant habit of bedaubing themselves, and has then been pressed in on the wall.

NATIVE TRADITIONS.

I had been told that the natives had some very curious traditions current amongst them with regard to this last cave and, after having visited it and satisfied myself that there was no a.n.a.logy between it and the caves on the north-west continent of Australia, I set about collecting some of the native stories that related to it. These legends nearly all agreed in one point, that originally the moon, who was a man, had lived there; but beyond this there was nothing common to them all, for every narrator indulged his own powers of invention to the greatest possible degree, scarcely ever relating the same story twice, but on each occasion inventing a new tradition; and the amount of marvels and wonders which he unfolded in this revelation were exactly proportioned to the quant.i.ty of food which I promised to give him. I once or twice charged them with attempting to impose upon my credulity and, far from denying the charge, they only laughed and said, "that was a very good thing which they told me, and that the Djanga (white men) liked it very much."

COLOURS USED IN PAINTING.

In the painted caves on the north-western coasts five colours were used: red, several shades; yellow; blue; black, and white. With the exception of blue these colours are all known to the natives of the whole continent. The red they either dig up from the earth, fit for use, in the form of red earthy pebbles, or they find it in the form of a brilliant yellow clay, which they beat, clean, and dry, leaving it exposed to the air for several days, when they bake it in a bark basket, and then, if the clay is good and it has been well prepared and burnt, it is nearly as bright as vermilion. In some parts of the continent however no good clay can be found; and in this case, at their annual fair, where they meet to exchange certain commodities only locally produced, this brilliant red ochre is considered a very valuable article of traffic.

Yellow they obtain from several sources: the most common is the yellow clay from which the red is afterwards produced, but they also procure it from a stone which is traversed by veins of yellow earth; from the interior of the nest of a species of ant which collects a yellow dust; and from a sort of fungus from which a similar dust is also obtained.

The black is nothing but finely pounded charcoal.

The white is a very fine greasy species of pipe-clay, common all over Australia, and which they use either wet or dry.

How the blue colour used in the caves on the north-west was obtained I do not know; it is very dark and brilliant, and closely resembles the colour obtained from the seed-vessel of a plant very common there, and which, on being broken, yields a few drops of a brilliant blue liquid. I therefore imagined that it was procured from this source.

AGE AND MOTIVE OF DRAWINGS.

With regard to the age of these paintings we had no clue whatever to guide us. It is certain that they may have been very ancient, for, although the colours were composed of such perishable materials, they were all mixed with a resinous gum, insoluble in water, and, no doubt, when thus prepared, they would be capable of resisting, for a long period, the usual atmospheric causes of decay. The painting which appeared to me to have been the longest executed was the one clothed in the long red dress, but I came to this conclusion solely from its state of decay and dilapidation, and these may possibly have misled me very much; but, whatever may have been the age of these paintings, it is scarcely probable that they could have been executed by a self-taught savage. Their origin therefore I think must still be open to conjecture.

But the art and skill with which some of the figures are drawn, and the great effect which has been produced by such simple means, renders it most probable that these paintings must have been executed with the intention of exercising an influence upon the fears and superst.i.tious feelings of the ignorant and barbarous natives: for such a purpose they are indeed well calculated; and I think that an attentive examination of the arrangement of the figures we first discovered, more particularly of that one over the entrance of the cave, will tend considerably to bear out the conclusion I have here advanced.

SINGULARITY REGARDING THEM.

It is a singularity worthy of remark that the drawings we found in the vicinity of the coast were nothing but the rudest scratches; that they gradually improved until we reached the farthest point we attained from the sea; and that it was in the vicinity of this point that some of the best productions were found.

CHAPTER 12. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. MOUNTAIN RANGES.

The most remarkable geographical feature in North-Western Australia is a high range of mountains running north-north-east and south-south-west, named by me Stephen's Range after James Stephen, Esquire, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. From this primary range several branches are thrown off: 1. One between Roe's River on the north and Prince Regent's River on the south. 2. Macdonald's Range that throws off streams to Prince Regent's River on the north and to Glenelg River on the south. 3.

Whateley's Range which gives forth streams to Glenelg River on the north, and to the low country behind Collier's Bay and Dampier's Land on the south.

These branch ranges as well as the princ.i.p.al one are all composed of ancient sandstone, deposited in nearly horizontal strata, or of basaltic rocks which are only visible in certain places, and are most fully developed in that part of Stephen's Range which lies behind Collier's Bay, and in the low ground near Glenelg River.

With the extent of Stephen's Range I am unacquainted; but I have no doubt that the high land whence the Fitzroy River takes its rise is merely an under-feature again thrown off from it, and which I propose to call Wickham's Range after Captain Wickham, R.N., the discoverer of the Fitzroy.

We may form some idea of the limits of Stephen's Range in a north and east direction from the following pa.s.sage extracted from Captain King's survey of these coasts:*

Lacrosse Island is situated in the entrance of a deep opening trending to the south-south-west towards some steep, rugged hills. The character of the country is here entirely changed. Irregular ranges of detached rocky hills of sandstone formation, very slightly clothed with small shrubs and rising abruptly from extensive plains of low, level land, seem to have superseded the low wooded coasts that almost uninterruptedly prevails between this and Cape Wessel, a distance of more than six hundred miles!

(*Footnote. King's Australia volume 1 page 291.)

It appears therefore that this main range contains within it the sources of Roe's River, Prince Regent's and Glenelg Rivers, most probably the Fitzroy, and those that run into Cambridge Gulf and perhaps others that have their embouchures between this last and Admiralty Gulf.

From an accident having occurred to the only barometer we could carry with us I am unable to state the elevation of the highest land we reached above the level of the sea; but the appearance of the country on the coast does not give the impression of any very elevated ground existing near it. This however is owing to the great height of the sh.o.r.e cliffs and the gradual rise of the land towards the interior. The following observations, made with the barometer before it was broken, will show however that the alt.i.tude of the country at no great distance from the coast is considerable.