Customs of the natives.

The natives of the Darling are a clean-limbed, well-conditioned race, generally speaking.  They seemingly occupy permanent huts, but their tribe did not bear any proportion to the size or number of their habitations.  It was evident their population had been thinned.  The customs of these distant tribes, as far as we could judge, were similar to those of the mountain blacks, and they are essentially the same people, although their language differs.  They lacerate their bodies, but do not extract the front teeth.  We saw but few cloaks among them, since the opossum does not inhabit the interior.  Those that were noticed, were made of the red kangaroo skin.  In appearance, these men are stouter in the bust than at the lower extremities; they have broad noses, sunken eyes, overhanging eyebrows, and thick lips.  The men are much better looking than the women.  Both go perfectly naked, if I except the former, who wear nets over the loins and across the forehead, and bones through the cartilages of the nose.  Their chief food is fish, of which they have great supplies in the river; still they have their seasons for hunting their emus and kangaroos.  The nets they use for this purpose, as well as for fishing, are of great length, and are made upon large frames.  These people do not appear to have warlike habits nor do they take any pride in their arms, which differ little from those used by the inland tribes, and are assimilated to them as far as the materials will allow.  One powerful man, however, had a regular trident, for which Mr. Hume offered many things without success.  He plainly intimated to us that he had a use for it, but whether against an enemy or to secure prey, we could not understand.  I was most anxious to have ascertained if any religious ceremonies obtained among them, but the difficulty of making them comprehend our meaning was insurmountable; and to the same cause may be attributed the circumstance of my being unable to collect any satisfactory vocabulary of their language.  They evinced a strange perversity, or obstinacy rather, in repeating words, although it was evident that they knew they were meant as questions.  The pole we observed in the creek, on the evening previously to our making the Darling, was not the only one that fell under our notice; our impression therefore, that they were fixed by the natives to propitiate some deity, was confirmed.  It would appear that the white pigment was an indication of mourning.  Whether these people have an idea of a superintending Providence I doubt, but they evidently dread evil agency.  On the whole I should say they are a people, at present, at the very bottom of the scale of humanity.

Remarks on the Darling river.