chorus, accompanying their
wild gesticulations with frightful yells, and noises. The
whole `tableau' is fearfully grand! The dark wild forest
scenery around--the bright fire-light gleaming upon the savage
and uncouth figures of the men, their natural dark hue being
made absolutely horrible by the paintings bestowed on them,
consisting of lines and other marks done in white and red
pipe-clay, which gives them an indescribably ghastly and
fiendish aspect--their strange attitudes, and violent
contortions and movements, and the unearthly sound of their
yells, mingled with the wild and monotonous wail-like chant of
the women, make altogether a very near approach to the horribly
sublime in the estimation of most Europeans who have witnessed
an assembly of the kind."

1846. G. H. Haydon, `Five Years in Australia Felix,' p. 103:

"They have no instrument of music, the corobery's song being
accompanied by the beating of two sticks together, and by the
women thumping their opossum rugs.'"

1847. J. D. Lang, `Cooksland,' p. 447 [Footnote]:

"These words, which were quite as unintelligible to the natives
as the corresponding words in the vernacular language of the
white men would have been, were learned by the natives, and are
now commonly used by them in conversing with Europeans, as
English words. Thus <i>corrobbory</i>, the Sydney word for a
general assembly of natives, is now commonly used in that sense
at Moreton Bay; but the original word there is
<i>yanerwille</i>. <i>Cabon</i>, great; <i>narang</i>, little;
<i>boodgeree</i>, good; <i>myall</i>, wild native, etc. etc.,
are all words of this description, supposed by the natives [of
Queensland] to be English words, and by the Europeans to be
aboriginal words of the language of that district."

[The phrase "general assembly" would rise naturally in the mind
of Dr. Lang as a Presbyterian minister; but there is no
evidence of anything parliamentary about a corrobbery.]

1848. W. Westgarth, `Australia Felix,' p. 78:

"The exact object or meaning of their famous corrobboree or
native dance, beyond mere exercise and patience, has not as yet
been properly ascertained; but it seems to be mutually
understood and very extensively practised throughout Australia,
and is generally a sign of mutual fellowship and good feeling
on the part of the various tribes."

1849. J. P. Townsend, `Rambles in New South Wales,' p. 100:

"When our blacks visited Sydney, and saw the m