om 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.

[Fig. 4. An Australian Stele: 283.jpg]

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. {286} This is one of the questions
which we can hardly deal with here. Perhaps its solution requires more
of knowledge, anthropological and linguistic, than is at present within
the reach of any student. Assuredly the races of the earth have wandered
far, and have been wonderfully intermixed, and have left the traces of
their passage here and ther