sumed by both the natives and the whites.
This product is similar to the chestnut in taste and appearance, each
tree producing a bushel or more at a time. The bunya-bunya has a sort of
mysterious significance with the "black fellows" as the aborigines are
called, and no one is permitted to cut down one of these trees. The
laws of the colony also forbid its destruction.

The aborigines are oftener met here than at the south, as they prefer to
live in the more temperate climate, and where they can have the country
more to themselves. They are all nomads, and probably do not number over
twenty-five or thirty thousand, slowly but surely decreasing numerically
before the advance of the whites. Even when first discovered they were
but a handful of people, as it were, scattered over an immense
continent. They have still no distinct notion of the building of houses
in which to live, or at least they adopt none, though they have the
example of the whites ever before them. As a rule they are hideously
ugly, with flat noses, wide nostrils, and deep-sunken eyes wide apart. A
bark covering, much ruder than anything which would content an American
Indian, forms their only shelter, and they often burrow under the lee
side of an overhanging rock. Unlike the Maoris of New Zealand, they have
no settled abode, and are more nomadic than the Bedouins of the Desert.
The skill of this people in tracking game or human beings is nearly
equal to that of the blood-hound. In the early days of penal servitude
they were specially employed by the authorities for this purpose, and
have been known to conduct a pursuit after an escaping convict for a
hundred miles without once losing his trail, and finally leading to his
capture. In the more modern conflicts between the Bushrangers and the
authorities they proved of great value, not as fighters, but as
trackers.

Missionary effort among these Australian tribes seems to have been
pretty much abandoned, and by intelligent people is considered to have
been a failure. Like all savage races, they are full of superstitions.
They pay little attention to marriage obligations, but buy and sell
wives according to their fancy, the women acquiescing with quiet
indifference. We were told of one practice among them so ridiculous that
we doubted it when first we heard of it. Ocular demonstration, however,
proved its reality. It appears that when a youth arrives at such an age
that he aspires to be a man, so to speak,