sed weapons of bone, of
unpolished stone, and probably of hard wood. But the remnants of their
art, the scraps of mammoth or reindeer bone in our museums, prove that
they had a most spirited style of sketching from the life. In a
collection of drawings on bone (probably designed with a flint or a
shell), drawings by palaeolithic man, in the British Museum, I have
only observed one purely decorative attempt. Even in this the
decoration resembles an effort to use the outlines of foliage for
ornamental purposes. In almost all the other cases the palaeolithic
artist has not decorated his bits of bone in the usual savage manner,
but has treated his bone as an artist treats his sketch-book, and has
scratched outlines of beasts and fishes with his sharp shell as an
artist uses his point. These ancient bones, in short, are the
sketch-books of European savages, whose untaught skill was far greater
than that of the Australians, or even of the Eskimo. When brought into
contact with Europeans, the Australian and Eskimo very quickly, even
without regular teaching, learn to draw with some spirit and skill. In
the Australian stele, or grave-pillar, which we have engraved (Fig.
4), the shapeless figures below the men and animals are the dead, and
the _boilyas_ or ghosts. Observe the patterns in the interstices. The
artist had lived with Europeans. In their original conditions,
however, the Australians have not attained to such free, artist-like,
and unhampered use of their rude materials as the mysterious European
artists who drew the mammoth that walked abroad amongst them.

[Illustration: Fig. 5.--_a_, A Maori Design; _b_, Tattoo on a Maori's
Face.]

We have engraved one solitary Australian attempt at drawing curved
lines. The New Zealanders, a race far more highly endowed, and, when
Europeans arrived amongst them, already far more civilised than the
Australians, had, like the Australians, no metal implements. But their
stone weapons were harder and keener, and with these they engraved the
various spirals and coils on hard wood, of which we give examples
here. It is sometimes said that New Zealand culture and art have
filtered from some Asiatic source, and that in the coils and spirals
designed, as in our engravings, on the face of the Maori chief, or on
his wooden furniture, there may be found debased Asiatic
influences.[238] This is one of the questions which we can hardly deal
with here. Perhaps its solution requires more of kno