Читать книгу The Story of the Blacks - Charles White - Страница 4

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Dampier, the Buccaneer, whose wild exploits in the Indian and Southern seas reads like a romance, was the first to describe the natural history and scenery of Australia, and the habits and customs of the natives. In his journal of adventures in the South Seas, published in London in 1691, appears a narrative of his first visit to the western shores of Australia, when he was on a marauding expedition in the ship Cygnet. The description given by him, though by no means flattering, must strike the Australian reader as remarkable for its vividness and fairly correct delineation, and having been written more than two centuries ago, may be looked upon as a curious record of keen observation, although it may not be estimated of surpassing value as a reliable picture of things as they existed at that remote period. His visit was made in January, 1688, and this is the manner in which he recorded some of his observations and impressions:—

"New Holland is a very large tract of land. . . . . We saw no sort of animal, nor any track of beast, but once; and that seemed to be the tread of a beast as big as a great mastiff dog. Here are a few small land birds, but none bigger than a blackbird, and but few sea-fowls. Neither is the sea very plentifully stored with fish, unless you reckon the manatee and turtle as such of these creatures there is plenty, but they are extraordinarily shy, though the inhabitants cannot trouble them much, having neither boats nor iron.

"The inhabitants of this country are the miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods of Monomatpa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these; who have no houses and skin garments, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth, ostrich eggs, &c., as the Hodmadods have; and setting aside their shape, they differ but little from brutes. They are tall, straight-bodied and thin, with small long limbs. They have great heads, round foreheads, and great brows. Their eye-lids are always half closed, to keep the flies out of their eyes; they being so troublesome here that no fanning will keep them from coming to one's face, and without the assistance of both hands to keep them off they will creep into one's nostrils and mouth too, if the lips are not shut very close; so that from their infancy being thus annoyed with these insects they do not open their eyes as other people; and therefore they cannot see far unless they hold up their heads as if they were looking at something over them. They have great bottle-noses, pretty full lips, and wide mouths; the two fore-teeth are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young; whether they draw them out I know not; neither have they any beards. They are long visaged, and of a very unpleasing aspect, having no one graceful feature in their faces. Their hair is black, short and curled, like that of the Negroes, and not long and lank like the common Indians. The color of their skin, both of their faces and the rest of their body, is coal black, like that of the Negroes of Guinea. They have no sort of clothes, but the piece of the rind of a tree tied like a girdle about their waist and a handful of long grass, or three or four small boughs full of leaves, thrust under their girdle to cover their nakedness. They have no houses, but lie in the open air without any covering; the earth being their bed and the heaven their canopy. Whether they cohabit one man to one woman or promiscuously, I know not; but they do live in companies, 20 or 30 men, women, and children altogether.

"Their only food is a small sort of fish, which they get by making wares of stones across little coves or branches of the sea; every tide bringing in a small fish, and there leaving them for a prey to these people, who constantly attend there to search for them at low water. This small fry I take to be the top of their fishery. They have no instruments to catch great fish should they come, and such seldom stay to be left behind at low water; nor could we catch any fish with our hooks and lines all the time we lay there. In other places at low water they seek for cockles, mussels, and periwinkles; of these shell fish there are fewer still, so that their chiefest dependence is upon what the sea leaves in their wares; which be it much or little they gather up, and march to the places of their abode. There the old people who are not able to stir abroad by reason of their age, and the tender infants, await their return; and what Providence has bestowed on them they presently broil on the coals and eat it in common. Sometimes they get as many fish as makes them a plentiful banquet, and at other times they scarce get everyone a taste; but be it little or much that they get, everyone has his part as well the young and tender, the old and feeble, who are not able to go abroad, as the strong and lusty. When they have eaten they lie down until the next low water, and then all that are able to march out, be it night or day, rain or sunshine, it is all one, they must attend the wares or else they must fast, for the earth affords them no food at all. There is neither herb, root, pulse, nor any sort of grain for them to eat, that we saw; nor any sort of bird or beast that they can catch, having no instruments wherewith to do so. I did not perceive that they did worship anything. These poor creatures have a sort of weapon to defend their ware, or fight with their enemies, if they have any who will interfere with their poor fishery. They did at first endeavour with their weapons to frighten us, who lying ashore deterred them from one of their fishing places. Some of them had wooden swords (boomerangs), others had a sort of lance.

"The sword is a piece of wood shaped something like a cutlass. The lance is a long straight pole sharp at one end, and hardened afterwards by heat. I saw no iron nor other sort of metal; therefore it is probable that they use stone hatchets, as some Indians in America do. These people speak somewhat through the throat, but we could not understand one word that they said."

When the natives first caught sight of the strange visitors they gathered on the shore gazing curiously at the vessel, but when Dampier and a boat's crew landed they suddenly disappeared in the bush. Search was made for three successive days for native houses, but none were found, although the remains of numerous camp fires were seen.

"At last," says Dampier, "we went over to the island, and there we found a great many natives. I do believe there were 40 on one island, men, women, and children. The men at first coming ashore threatened us with their lances and swords, but they were frightened by firing one gun, which we fired to frighten them. The island was so small that they could not hide themselves, but they much disordered at our landing, especially the women and children, for we went directly to their camp. The lustiest of the women snatched up their infants, ran away howling, and the little children ran after, squealing and howling, but the men stood still. Some of the women and such people as could not go from us, lay still by a fire, making a doleful noise, as if we had been coming to devour them, but when they saw we did not intend to harm them they were pretty quiet, and the rest that fled from us at our first coming returned again. This, their place of dwelling was only a fire, with a few boughs before it, set up on that side the wind was off. After we had been here a little while, the men began to be familiar, and we clothed some of them, designing to have had some service of them for it, for we found some wells of water here, and intended to carry two or three barrels of it aboard; but it being somewhat troublesome to carry to the canoes, we thought to have made these men to have carried it for us, and therefore we gave them some old clothes; to one an old pair of breeches, to another a ragged shirt, to the third a jacket that was scarce worth owning; which yet would have been very acceptable at some places where we had been, and so we thought they might have been with these people. We put them on them, thinking that this finery would have brought them to work heartily for us, and our water being filled in small long barrels, about six gallons in each, which were made purposely to carry water in, we brought these our servants to the wells, and put a barrel on each of their shoulders for them to carry to the canoe. But all the signs we could make were to no purpose, for they stood like statues, without motion, but grinned like so many monkies, staring one upon another, for these poor creatures seemed not accustomed to carry burthens, and I believe that one of our ship boys of ten years old would carry as much as one of them. So we were forced to carry our water ourselves, and they fairly put the clothes off again, and laid them down, as if clothes were only to work in.. .. . Those inhabitants who lived on the main would always run away from us; yet we took several of them. For they had such bad eyes that they could not see us till we came close to them."

It will be seen later on how very far wrong Dampier was in his estimate of the visual powers of the natives.

In 1699 Dampier again visited Australia, this time the eastern coast, he having previously abandoned his piratical career and obtained a commission from King William III. to make a voyage of discovery. He thus describes his meeting with the natives at Shark's Bay, where the voyagers had landed to search for water:—

"While we were at work (digging in the sand for water) there came nine or ten of the natives to a small hill a little way from us, and stood there menacing and threatening of us, and making a great noise. At last one of them came towards us, and the rest followed at a distance. I went out to meet him, and came within 50 yards of him, making to him all the signs of peace and friendship I could; but then he ran away, neither would any of them stay for us to come nigh them, for we tried two or three times. At last I took two with me, and went in the afternoon along by the seaside purposely to catch one of them if I could, of whom I might learn where they got their fresh water. There were ten or twelve of the natives a little way off, who, seeing us three going away from the rest of our men, followed us at a distance. . . . Being three or four times our numbers, they thought to seize us. So they dispersed themselves, some going to the sea-shore, and others beating about the sand-hills. We know by what encounter we had with them in the morning that we could easily out-run them; so that a nimble young man that was with me seeing some of them near ran towards them, and they for some time ran away before him; but he soon overtaking them, they faced about and fought him. He had a cutlass and they had wooden lances, with which, being many of them, they were too hard for him. When he first ran towards them I chased two more that were by the shore; but fearing how it might be with my young man, I turned back quickly and went up to the top of a sand-hill, whence I saw him near me, closely engaged with them. Upon them seeing me, one of them threw a lance at me, that narrowly missed me. I discharged my gun to scare them, but avoided shooting any of them; till finding the young man in great danger from them, and myself in some, and that though the gun had a little frightened them at first, yet they had soon learnt to despise it, tossing up their hands and crying "pooh, pooh, pooh"; and coming on afresh with a great noise, I thought it time to charge again and shoot one of them, which I did. The rest seeing him fall made a stand again, and my young man took the opportunity to disengage himself, and come off to me; and I returned back with my men, designing to attempt the natives no farther, being very sorry for what had happened already. They took up their wounded companion, and my young man, who had been struck through the cheek by one of their lances, was afraid if it had been poisoned; but I did not think that likely. His wound was very painful to him, being made with a blunt weapon; but he soon recovered of it. Among the New Hollanders, whom we were thus engaged with, there was one by his appearance and carriage, as well in the morning as this afternoon, seemed to be the chief of them, and a kind of prince or captain among them. He was a young, brisk man, not very tall, nor so personal as some of the rest, though more active and courageous; he was painted (which none of the rest were at all) with a circle of white paste or pigment (a sort of lime, as we thought) about his eyes, and a white streak down his nose, from his forehead to the tip of it; and his breast and some part of his arms were also made white with the same paint; not for beauty or ornament, one would think, but as some wild Indian warriors are said to do, he seemed thereby to design the looking more terrible; this his painting adding very much to his natural deformity; for they all of them have the most unpleasant looks and the worst features of any people that I ever saw, though I have seen a great variety of savages."

Read in the light of what other explorers have written, the description given by Dampier of the appearance, habits, and customs of the coastal tribes must be taken as fairly correct, and ample evidence could be produced to show that during the time intervening between the last visit of the reformed buccaneer and the occupation of the soil by the First Fleeters—running on to a century—there was very little change, and the probabilities are that had the natives remained in undisputed possession of the soil until the present day, the same monotonous condition of non-development would have been observed.