ALIEN SONG.

BLIND Homer sung in alien realms
Heroic strains of deeds sublime;
Thus he whom absence overwhelms,
May sing for every land and time.
With Gama went the Lusian bard,
First Eastern India to explore;
He sung, and now has his reward,
Contemned, neglected now no more.
Tasso, immersed in dungeon glooms,
From friends and home-scenes pined apart:
Yet still in vigorous beauty blooms
The amaranth of the poet's heart.

The bird that nightly carols sweetest,
An alien is in British bowers;
The first to come, to go the fleetest,
And sings to cheer the darksome hours.
By alien streams sad Hebrew sages
Their harps had fain on willows hung:
Yet vibrate still through latest ages

The mournful numbers which they sung.

In fields as Bethel bright, or Haran,
Carmel, or Seir, my being grew;

'Midst flowers sweet as the rose of Sharon,
Or lilies wet with Hermon's dew.
Where woman's warmth and light are heaven,
'Midst noblest shapes of manly mind;

To me a life enlarged was given,

And earth's dull nature half divined.

For this, midst Austral wilds I waken
Our British harp, feel whence I come,
Queen of the sea, too long forsaken,

Queen of the soul! my spirit's home!

185

THE ABORIGINES OF PORT PHILLIP.

Of all the novelties of the new land, that which was with us a matter of the greatest interest and curiosity, previous to our arrival in the colony, was the kind of people and the condition in which we should find the natives. The country from the first had not been located more than six years, and we thought that amongst them yet would be found much of the original simplicity, wildness, and picturesqueness of their peculiar situation, undimmed and undissipated by familiar European intercourse. In this respect we were not entirely disappointed. With what avidity, from very childhood, had we read and heard of all strange people of all strange new lands! and here we were going to come, for the first time, into contact with a race as strange and singular as any of them. In Melbourne they were first seen, and what a contrast did they present, so seen, with the European inhabitants! Already they were become, not only Gibeonites,hewers of wood and drawers of water, for the white strangers-they were beggars; and they swarmed about the newly-arrived with great earnestness, probably finding that there their importunities had not yet produced the usual effect. Women in their dirty brown blanket mantles, with hair in elf-locks, and faces flaming like a sunset, reddened, especially about the eyes, with a similar coloured earth, with ornaments of cane-beads about one of their ancles and on one wrist, and sometimes necklaces of the same. These creatures were at us first; other women there were, in well-worn, tattered, and faded opossum-skin rugs; their hair, too, grotesquely ornamented, and children with them, the larger ones leaping and running about; the boys naked; the girls with a slight rope-fringe covering tied round the loins: other lesser brats were in magras, gipsy-like, at their mothers' backs; and these came round us, wanting "black money," ""white money,"

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bread," &c. ; others we saw chopping wood in kitchen-yards, white women giving them directions how to do their work. The men more leisurely, more like holiday people, were stopping the settlers who rode through the streets to shake hands, and very cordially did the settlers shake them by the hand, and gave them money-white money, too. Loudly the black fellows talked to the white fellows, and loudly laughed, also; especially when they received a silver gratuity. A vast deal of English and the native language we heard the first few days, chopped up together, and odd enough it sounded. At night, or rather in the evening, we saw the women and children coming from the town,

loaded with sheep's-heads and feet; and these they prepared to cook, in their way, by the river. They first cut a quantity of long grass by the water-side, dipping it in the water; this they placed in a hole where some old tree had been blown, and on it kindled a fire. I supposed the process some aboriginal mode of steam-cookery, but was not sure. No sooner, however, were the women and children comfortably despatching their sheepshank meal, than one of the lords of the black creation came to them, and entering the black circle, he dealt amongst them a liberal gratuity of blows with his waddy on first one head and then another, every blow producing its effect of loud lamentation. One poor woman, on whom his blows had fallen the heaviest, went thence a little way, and sitting her down, wept bitterly. I thought before the scene wretched enough naturally, but they felt no doubt comfortable, until their black "friend of an ill fashion" had broken in upon their miserable happiness with deeper misery. Amidst all the wretchedness which he had suddenly occasioned, their black lord moved about with an air of the coolest indifference; he first took up one of the dogs, and then another, and tossed them deliberately into the river.

This I saw from the opposite side of the Yarra. Not very far off, but luckily far enough from the tyrant, sat a young native woman, busy tricking herself out in a cast-off print gown, given her by some white lubra," and making use of the water as a mirror. Very great self-satisfaction and personal admiration was evident in the face and motions of the dark maiden while contemplating herself and her grand acquisition.

Very soon we had an opportunity of witnessing in the very little boys, the admirable dexterity with which they fling the bomerangs. To our thinking the thrower was only sending the instrument along the ground, when suddenly, after spinning along it a little way, it sprung up into the air, performing a circle, its crescent shape spinning into a ring, constantly spinning round and round, until it came and fell at his feet. This adroitness astonished us no little; nor had the skill been acquired so early without abundant application, and great natural freedom and elasticity of limb.

One circumstance that struck us as very peculiar was the nice perception the natives have of the progress of time; for without any general or individual time measures, they, by one simultaneous movement, may be seen streaming from a hundred different localities to one centre of attraction, and that every evening, arriving a little before sunset at the native

encampment. If the heavens are obscured they are as exact, and know to a nicety in what part of the sky the sun is. Of localities they have also as nice a knowledge. When out hunting in the far-a-way wild bush they will cast down a war implement or an opossum-rug at the foot of a tree, and after going here and there widely about the forest, will return to the left article as accurately as a person in a town would to his own door.

We soon had opportunities of witnessing, first a battle, then a corrobory, or native dance. One day we saw from our tents people of all classes coming out of Melbourne, crossing the punt above and the ferry-boat below us, and all proceeding in one direction. We added ourselves to the concourse; and soon came amongst the trees, about half-a-mile off, to the assembled warriors and spectators. The appearance of the savage people was wild and hideous, painted red and white, naked, with their long spears, their bomerangs, their waddies; and with the women and children belonging to each tribe, two groups of them, each under a tree apart. There was much noise and stir on both sides. One warrior would suddenly start out from amongst his comrades, and going up rapidly to the very front rank of the enemy alone, he there defied them, taunted them, poured upon them scornfully his utmost contempt; and they, all the while he was making contemptuous gestures and talking vehemently, were crouched in a row, sputtering with their lips, and tossing dust towards their defier. Then the same defiance was acted by the adverse party. There was all at once a commotion and a shout

or yell rather-and then a bomerang flew, many following after it-and spears too—and shields were as actively used for defence as the weapons were for injury. To witness this war burlesque there were nearly a thousand of the Melbourne people, whilst of the natives there could not be more than three hundred. Would to heaven all Christian wars were as bloodless! Το hear the yells of onset and the shouts of victory, and to have seen the shifting panoply of dreadful strife, the flight of horrid weapons, you felt pretty certain all must be annihilated. Slain none; wounded one; one man was speared through the leg.

Had I not seen afterwards other battles, I should have set this down for mere mockery. Thus they do not kill each other in open warfare, but secretly and treacherously. This battle took place through the Port Phillip tribe having been over to the Goulburn, eighty miles off, and stolen away their lubras, their wives, not called gins in this part of Australia. One of the lubras resisted, and was killed; the others were brought away.

We had visited their fires nightly, and in the daytime they had visited ours; for they do not move about at all in the night. Major Mitchell's account of their dwellings, inclined pieces of bark, open sideways to their fires, is correct. There they lie about on grass, or on the hard ground. A white man lives with them in a tent, called the protector of the blacks: he has, I believe, a salary. I saw with him a native or two in his tent, Jacka-Jacka, the chief, being one; there he sat, with an open desk, busily employed in writing, many sheets of well-inked paper lying before him. I troubled him with no questions, but supposed him occupied with some account of the people, or, perhaps, their language.*

The next night we witnessed their dance of reconciliation, the corrobory. If we had been gratified by the war exhibition, with this we were much more so. There is something in the corrobory unimaginably wild and grotesque; celebrated as it is by night in the presence of vast fires; their dusky painted figures mingling oddly; their wild gesticulations and uncouth voices, modulated to suit savage ears, in the strong glaring light and the dense darkness.

Imagine fifty men of all ages dancing in mazes, first in one figure then in another; one old man, apart from the rest, as master of the ceremonies, indicating their movements by his own, and time beaten by a group of women seated round a huge fire. Movement and voice in most outlandish unison; sometimes slow and solemn, then rapid and shrill, and as suddenly ended, and all hushed!

No pictorial representations can convey any but faint notions of their movements; either of the battle or of the corrobory. I had read of them, and seen them pictured: but, with all helps of a willing imagination, they were beaten hollow by the reality. I shall not attempt a complete description; let those who deem themselves equal to the task perform it. To us as much of the charm consisted in the season and the scene as in the people. The wild dance, and rude accompaniment of strange motions and sounds, had a singular effect, so strongly aided by strong lights and shades;

Seen by "flaming fires, which lit

The darkness of the scenery."

*This was Mr. Assistant Protector Thomas, with whom I had afterwards the pleasure of becoming intimately acquainted. My surmises were correct; but since I left the colony the whole of his interesting papers have been stolen.