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49 CLOTHING, ORNAMENTS AND TENEMENTS. Generally speaking the Australian aborigines prefer the absence of dress. In cold weather, the opossum or kangaroo skin rug, neatly sewed with sinews or a kind of grass, is thrown around their persons. The substitution of this by the lazy blanket is no improvement. On the sea coast garments have been worked out of rushes and seaweed. Their ornaments are simple, and not so regarded as among other people. There is rather an indifference than otherwise to indulgence in finery ; though it may arise from public opinion, and the fear of ridicule. The feathers of the swan, emu, cockatoo, &c., adorn them on grand occasions; when the hair is sometimes studded with the teeth of kangaroos and claws of birds, as among the American Indians, with strings of pieces of small reed around their necks. The women are deemed sufficiently beautiful without such silly appendages; they have no auxiliaries to their native charms. The men even appropriate to themselves alone the curl and ochre band ; though both sexes have cicatrices or raised scars, the ladies’ backs being thus adorned. The Mosaical injunctions “ Nor print any mark upon you ; I am the Lord,” scarcely applies to our natives. The Tattoo belongs to the New Zealander. Their dwellings are not substantial. Continually roving about in search for food, they cannot trouble about such erections ; and, generally, in so fine a climate as this, they have little require ment for them. A few sticks and boughs ;—some branches against a fallen tree ;—or the breakwind of an opossum rug, is about all they desire. Sometimes the wirlie is framed of reeds or sticks, and covered with boughs, bark, grass, rags, or old clothes ; it is occasionally made to turn round, so as to suit the change of wind. Where food is plentiful, the huts are better built. Mr. Protector Robinson, on his first visit to the wild tribes of Lake Hindmarsh found some of this character, which he thus describes ; “ large and well constructed habitations shaped in the form of a span roof, thatched with reeds, pleasantly situated on the verge of a pond, was quite unique, and highly creditable to the skill and industry of the native artizans.” When near Mount Napier he
