These islanders were all cannibals when first discovered by Europeans, intellectually inferior to other savages, ignorant of agricultural and mechanical arts, going entirely naked, and living more like brutes than human beings.  Slowly and mutinously have their barbarous customs been relinquished, even by those brought into occasional contact with foreigners, while those in the interior are savage as the monsters that prowl about them in dens and holes of the earth.  Even such as mingle most freely with the colonists can seldom be prevailed on to practice permanently the arts of civilized life, usually preferring their original habits and pursuits to the restraints of society.  They readily admit the superiority of foreigners, but cling tenaciously to their forest homes and rude lives of unfettered freedom.  In character they are cruel and vindictive, improvident and thievish; and they seem almost devoid of gallantry in the treatment of their women, wooing their wives with blows, and often inflicting death upon women and children for the slightest offences.  Yet they have some ideas of a Supreme Being and a future state, they practice a sort of religious worship, and they bury or burn their dead.  They call their chiefs be-a-na, or “father,” but unless compelled by fear to obedience they treat them with little respect or affection.  Their language has a musical sound, but the vocabulary is scanty; and thus far the origin of these people and their language remains a matter of doubt, though in many particulars they bear a decided resemblance to the negroes of Guinea.  In regard to dress their habits are certainly primitive.  A single ratskin often forms the entire wardrobe of a native chief, and a tomahawk with a brace of spears pointed with iron-wood or flint his adornments.  Opossum-skins tied together form a sort of cloak used as a protection against the cold, but if on the chase the wearer finds his upper garment oppressively warm, he tosses it away, and trusts to finding or stealing another when he needs it.  Their dwellings are wretched little huts, or rather sheds, composed of bark or dried leaves, and so low-pitched that one must crawl on his knees to enter them.  They are ill-ventilated and filthy in the extreme, utterly devoid of furniture and household implements, and without any means of securing either privacy or warmth—­places where we should deem it impossible to dwell content.  Yet the native Australian seems always merry, and he would not exchange his filthy hovel for the palace of a prince.  Unpretending as that of his subjects was the royal abode of the venerable King Tatambo, an old man, whom the count de Beauvoir describes as having a “skin black and shiny as liquorice, with snow-white hair and beard,” his only garment being a fur cloak that was cast aside during the dance at which the count was present.  He gives, in connection with the king’s portrait, that of “the youngest and most beautiful of His Majesty’s daughters,” which may serve as a type of the female beauty of Australia.