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The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888

E >> Ernest Favenc >> The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888




"These natives manufacture their water buckets and weapons very neatly,
and make from the bark of a tree a light but strong cord.

"THEIR HUTS, OF WHICH I ONLY SAW THOSE ON THE COAST, ARE CONSTRUCTED, IN
AN OVAL FORM, OF THE BOUGHS OF TREES, AND ARE ROOFED WITH DRY REEDS. THE
DIAMETER OF ONE WHICH I MEASURED WAS ABOUT FOURTEEN FEET AT THE BASE.

"THEIR LANGUAGE IS SOFT AND MELODIOUS, SO MUCH SO AS TO LEAD TO THE
INFERENCE THAT IT DIFFERS VERY MATERIALLY, IF NOT RADICALLY, FROM THE
MORE SOUTHERN AUSTRALIAN DIALECTS, WHICH I HAVE SINCE HAD AN OPPORTUNITY
TO INQUIRE INTO. Their gesticulation is expressive, and their bearing
manly and noble. They never speared a horse or sheep belonging to us,
and, judging by the degree of industry shown in their paintings, the
absence of anything offensive in the subjects delineated, and the careful
finish of some articles of common use, I should infer that, under proper
treatment, they might easily be raised very considerably in the scale of
civilisation.

"A REMARKABLE CIRCUMSTANCE IS THE PRESENCE AMONGST THEM OF A RACE, TO
APPEARANCE, TOTALLY DIFFERENT AND ALMOST WHITE, WHO SEEM TO EXERCISE NO
SMALL INFLUENCE OVER THE REST. I am forced to believe that the distrust
evinced towards strangers arose from these persons, as in both instances
when we were attacked, the hostile party was led by one of these
light-coloured men."


We need only draw the attention of the reader to the close resemblance
between the description of De Gonneville's "Australians" and that of
Grey's in many particulars, especially in their tribal organization, the
form of their houses, [Note, below] their language, and the fact of the
existence among them, as leaders of the tribes, of that race of almost
white men also observed about the same parts by Captain King, who thinks
that they are of Malay origin.

[Note: Callender, in his translation omits a passage referring to the
form of the huts of the Australians, which De Gonneville says were "EN
FORME DE HALLES," i.e., in the form of covered markets such as seen in
the villages of Normandy, which are generally oval structures.]

There are certain discrepancies, however, which cannot be explained away,
unless it is taken into consideration that Grey visited those coasts
three hundred and thirty years after the French sailor, and that during
that interval of time the customs of the inhabitants cannot fall to have
undergone a change. It may be also that the light-coloured people seen
amongst them are but the remnants of once numerous tribes, probably of
Malay origin, as these latter have left undeniable marks of their having
not intermixed with the native races throughout the whole of northern
Australia. One of the points of dissemblance which might be pointed out
is the fact that De Gonneville describes them as using bows and arrows,
which is at variance with our knowledge of the arms of the Australians,
and equally differs from Grey's description of the same; but this
objection exists also as regards the inhabitants of Madagascar, who,
besides, had already attained a much higher degree of civilisation than
that described by De Gonneville--being acquainted with the use of iron,
the manufacture of cotton and silk goods, fine mats, and many other
articles of value among civilised people. The Madagascar natives never
made use of the skins of animals as an article of dress, whilst this
custom is common to the aborigines of all parts of Australia, where the
kangaroo, opossums, native bears, and emus, furnish them with the
material, with which they could manufacture these garments of skins or
beds of feathers described by De Gonneville. But if the theory is
accepted, which we are about to put forward regarding the inhabitants of
this part of Australia--that at the time of De Gonneville's visit a
people of Malay origin inhabited it in fairly large numbers, of which the
light-coloured natives seen by Grey are the descendants, and that with
their disappearance from that district some of their customs disappeared
with them, the natives of the present day retaining only those best
suited to their actual mode of life--then the Norman captain's narrative
will become intelligible. Besides, as regards the use of bow and arrow,
certainly known to the Malays, although the intercourse of the latter
with other tribes on the north Australian coast has been undoubtedly
frequent, nowhere have the Australian natives adopted that kind of arm,
whilst in New Guinea and all over Northern Polynesia the bow and arrow is
the inevitable war accoutrement of the savage, who certainly obtained the
knowledge of it from his Malay forefathers. No wonder, then, that in the
district explored by Grey, these arms should have given way to the
equally effective boomerang, throwing-stick, and spears, and other
weapons of the North Australian savage.

The theory we have just submitted with regard to the country round the
Glenelg River and that of the Prince Regent having been at one time
inhabited by a different and superior race is no idle one, and is proved
by the discoveries of remarkable paintings made by the same Lieutenant
Grey in the caves near the mouth of the abovenamed rivers.

Again we shall have to quote this excellent author, whose clear and
concise descriptions are of such value, and refer the reader to the
following passages in the diary of his explorations in that part of the
Australian Continent:--


"On this sloping roof the principal figure (1) which I have just alluded
to was drawn. In order to produce the greater effect, the rock about it
was painted black, and the figure itself coloured with the most vivid red
and white. It thus appeared to stand out from the rock, and I was
certainly surprised at the moment that I first saw this gigantic head and
upper part of a body bending over and staring grimly down on me.

"It would be impossible to convey in words an adequate idea of this
uncouth and savage figure; I shall, therefore, only give such a succinct
account of this and the other paintings as will serve as a sort of
description to accompany the annexed plates.


"Length of head and face 2 ft. 0 in.
"Width of face 0 ft 17 in. (sic)
"Length from bottom of face to navel 2 ft 6 in.


"Its head was encircled by bright red rays, something like the rays which
one sees proceeding from the sun when depicted on the signboard of a
public house. Inside of this came a broad stripe of very brilliant red,
which was coped by lines of white; both inside and outside of this red
space were narrow stripes of a still deeper red, intended probably to
mark its boundaries. The face was painted vividly white and the eyes
black, being, however, surrounded by red and yellow lines. The body,
head, and arms were outlined red, the body being curiously painted with
red stripes and bars.

"Upon the rock which formed the left hand wall of this cave, and which
partly faced you on entering, was a very singular painting (2), vividly
coloured, representing four heads joined together. From the mild
expression of the countenances, I imagined them to represent females, and
they appeared to be drawn in such a manner and in such a position as to
look up at the principal figure which I have before described. Each had a
very remarkable head-dress, coloured with a deep, bright blue, and one
had a necklace on. Both of the lower figures had a sort of dress, painted
with red, in the same manner as that of the principal figure, and one of
them had a band round the waist. Each of the four faces was marked by a
totally distinct expression of countenance, and although none of them had
mouths, two, I thought, were otherwise rather good-looking. The whole
painting was executed on a white ground, and its dimensions were:--


"Total length of painting 3 ft. 6¾ in.
"Breadth across two upper heads 2 ft. 6 in.
"Breadth across two lower heads 3 ft. 1½ in.


These remarkable paintings attracted Grey's attention, and led him
wondering as to their origin. The solution to that problem he has however
left to others. (Fig 1, see Appendix.)

According to him, the first two frescoes--i.e., those situated on the
roof of the cave, representing the principal figure, and that
representing the four persons (probably women), are one subject. A glance
at their position, and the expression of their faces, leads one to accept
Grey's opinion as not only admissible, but as the only accurate one. The
group of women is placed in an attitude of prayer, or of submission
towards the central figure, also representing a woman, as all except the
head-dress, which is a little different, exactly resemble the others; it
is also evident that the artist wished to represent a religious subject.

It is necessary to remark that the people among which these drawings have
been found belong to an almost savage race, and in admitting that they
may be the work of a superior race that once inhabited these parts
(which, by the way, is the opinion of Sir George Grey), yet this superior
race could hardly be any other but some Malay tribe. Among these latter,
as well as among all savage, or semi-savage people, woman is considered
as a being of an inferior order, more fit to become a slave than to be
worshipped, and as the Malays had either adopted for centuries past,
either one of two creeds, that of Buddhism from the Hindoos, or that of
Mahomet from the Arabs, we look in vain, save in the former, and that in
only one or two well-known instances, which cannot for a moment be
entertained here, for the worship of a woman. The Malay religious
artistic subjects that we know of are of an order far above that of which
we have a sample here, and there is no resemblance at all in their
paintings with anything depicted in these caves.

There are several points of importance with regard to these pictures, to
which we beg to direct the reader's attention. In the first place, the
perfect oval shape of the head; secondly, the colour of the face, which
is painted VIVIDLY WHITE, evidently for some purpose; and thirdly, the
fact that the kind of dress worn over the bodies exactly resembles that
described by De Gonneville as worn by the women of the Southern Indies,
made of some kind of matted material, sometimes also of skins, or of
feathers, girt above the haunches and reaching to the knee. (Fig. 2, see
Appendix.)

Compare, also, the date assigned by Grey to these pictures-two or three
centuries, and this coincidence will appear still more remarkable.

But to return to the subject. It is difficult, if not impossible to
credit the natives at the time of Grey's visit as being the authors of
these paintings. The eminent traveller absolutely discredits such a
possibility, and attributes them to a far distant epoch, and a totally
different race. The perfect oval shape of the faces was not drawn so
without a purpose, and neither were they painted so vividly white, if the
artist had not desired to pourtray types of a race certainly not existing
at present on the the Australian continent. It is difficult to admit that
it might be of Malay origin, as tile head-dress, or to describe it more
perfectly, the AUREOLA surrounding the head, is met with in Buddhist
paintings or sculptures only as surrounding the head of gods, who can
always be recognised by their peculiar and constant characteristics, and
nowhere are these AUREOLAS surrounded with the rays in the shape of
"FLAMÈCHES," which confront us in the drawing of the principal figure.
(Fig. 3, see Appendix.) It resembles, indeed, much better Grey's own
description:--


"Its head was encircled by bright red rays, something like the rays which
one sees proceeding from the sun, when depicted on the sign board of a
public house."


There is evidently here some strange mixture of European and Malay art,
the former exhibited in the remarkable AUREOLAS which so commonly
surround the heads of saints in the old images, in painted church windows
of the middle ages, and the times of De Gonneville, and the latter in the
kind of dress over the body, which appears to be meant to represent some
sort of matted stuff. This painting is not the work of a native artist;
it is unlikely that it could be the work of Malays, in the third place
there is in its position and its peculiar appearance such a striking
touch of an European conception, mingled with barbaric surroundings, that
one is almost inclined to the belief that we are here in the presence of
a subject of religious, nay, a Christian order.


This deduction may need additional evidence, and if the reader will
kindly follow with us Lieutenant Grey's steps, he will be placed in the
presence of a still more remarkable painting, which we shall presently
describe.

"The cave was twenty feet deep, and at the entrance seven feet high and
about forty feet wide. As before stated the floor gradually approached
the roof in the direction of the bottom of the cavern, and its width also
contracted so that at the extremity it was not broader than the slab of
rock which formed a natural seat. The principal painting in it was the
painting of a man ten feet six inches in length, clothed from the chin
downwards in a red garment which reached to the wrists and ankles; beyond
this red dress the feet and hands protruded, and were badly executed.


"The face and head of the figure were enveloped in a succession of
circular bandages, or rollers, or what appeared to be painted to
represent such. These were coloured red, yellow, and white, and the eyes
were the only features represented on the face. Upon the highest bandage,
or roller, a series of lines were painted in red, but although so
irregularly done as to indicate that they have some meaning, it is
impossible to tell whether they were intended to depict written
characters or some ornament for the head. This figure was so drawn on the
roof that its feet were just in front of the natural seat, whilst its
head and face looked directly down on anyone who stood in the entrance of
the cave, but it was totally invisible from the outside. The painting was
more injured by the damp and atmosphere, and had the appearance of being
much more defaced and ancient than any of the others which we have seen.
There were two other paintings, one on each side of the rocks, which
stood on either side of the natural seat: they were carefully executed,
and yet had no apparent design in them, unless they were intended to
represent some fabulous species of turtle; for the natives of Australia
are generally fond of narrating tales of fabulous and extraordinary
animals, such as gigantic snakes, etc." (Fig. 4, see Appendix.)

With this drawing, as well as in the others, it is evident that native
talent had nothing to do. Neither had, in all probability, the Malays, as
the form of the dress and its colour are incompatible with anything we
know of these people. Then again the same AUREOLA surrounds the head of
the figure, and we are inclined to think that this drawing is due to the
same artist who painted those already described. Although Grey believes
that it is a more ancient production, the face of it having suffered more
than the other is in all probability due to it being more exposed to
atmospheric, or other influences, rather than to its greater antiquity.
There are, however, some very interesting points to examine in this
drawing, and in the first place our attention is drawn to the curious
signs inscribed on the AUREOLA surrounding the head.

At first sight, an illiterate person would at once exclaim, "these are
Latin characters."

G I T I L F

Five out of six undoubtedly are such, and the sixth appears to be part of
an unfinished or defaced letter, probably F or E. This is evidently very
remarkable, and more so is the fact which a closer examination discloses
that near the right shoulder of the figure two additional characters, C D,
also undoubtedly of Latin form, are there inscribed, proving the
European origin of this drawing, which resembles exactly those paintings
of the middle ages, representing some holy monk or nun in their
habilaments, of a coarse, brown cloth, the hands, and still more so the
feet in that, position which painters of religious subjects have rendered
us so familiar with on the old church windows, and other paintings of
those times. The practice of printing the name of the saint on the
AUREOLA encircling the head is also a common one, and perhaps we may find
there an explanation of that painting, which will also prove the others
to be of like origin. These characters are, undoubtedly, Latin, whichever
way one might like to turn them, and their appearance in such a spot is
not due to chance alone. It would be a difficult task to attempt to
explain their meaning, but, perhaps, a further exploration of these
singular caves may bring to light information leading to their
identification and explanation. Suffice it to say that they certainly
tend to show the European and Christian character of these paintings, the
first one probably representing the holy women praying before the Virgin,
and the other some holy nun, as the line over the chin seems to indicate
the well-known head-dress. It may be objected that the Virgin could
hardly have been pourtrayed in such a costume, to which the answer may be
made, that it was a common custom at the time, among the disciples of
Francis Xavier who evangelised India, to represent the Virgin and the
saints in the costume of the country, in order to bring them in an easier
way to the conception of the native mind, a practice, need it be added,
which brought on the head of the Jesuits the most severe condemnation.

If such is the case, and if these paintings are, as we believe, the work
of Europeans, we might look in their vicinity for some other and still
more convincing proof of their origin.

Such is afforded also, and the evidence is telling.

For the last time we shall quote the same eminent author, and at page 205
of vol. 1. of his work, we read:--


"After proceeding some distance, we found a cave larger than the one seen
this morning; of its actual size, however, I have no idea, for being
pressed for time I did not attempt to explore it, having merely
ascertained that it contained no paintings. I was moving on when we
observed a profile of a human face and head, cut out in a sandstone rock
which fronted the cave; this rock was so hard that to have removed such a
large portion of it with no better tool than a knife and hatchet made of
stone, such as the Australian natives generally possess, would have been
a work of very great labour. The head was two feet in length, and sixteen
inches in breadth in the broadest part; the depth of the profile
increased gradually from the edges where it was nothing, to the centre
where it was an inch and a half. The ear was rather badly placed, but
otherwise the whole of the work was good, and far superior to what a
savage race could be supposed capable of executing. The only proof of
antiquity that it bore about it was that all the edges of the cutting
were rounded and perfectly smooth, much more so than they could have been
from any other cause than long exposure to atmospheric influences.

"After having made a sketch of this head I returned to the party."


Now let us examine, without prepossession or prejudice, this remarkable
sculpture, THE ONLY HEAD SCULPTURED IN ROCK EVER FOUND IN AUSTRALIA.

This profile is that of an European, the purity of the lines, the perfect
shape of the head, the straight and well-formed nose, the finely-cut lips,
the round chin, represent the most exact type of an European head that it
could be possible to imagine. Indeed, the fact alone that the natives
have no means of cutting out such a sculpture in the rock, is enough to
induce one to seek elsewhere for its author, and the head is certainly
not that of a Malay; the type is European, and that of the purest.

We shall go no further with this discussion, which the appearance of this
sculptured profile of an European head closes on our behalf better than
all volumes would do, and resume it in a few words.

De Gonneville, carried away by storms into unknown seas, lands on a coast
which he estimates is situated to the south of India, and the Islands of
Spices, and not far from the true course to the East Indies; at the
entrance of a fine river, and in a fertile country, whose inhabitants he
describes. They were in all probability of Malay stock, and there is no
difficulty so far to understand his female relative having married a
person of that race, the remnants of which have been met with since by
other travellers.

Three hundred and thirty-five years after De Gonneville's voyage, King
and Grey explore in the north-west part of Australia, a country whose
description well answers to that visited by De Gonneville, and NEVER SET
FOOT UPON BY EUROPEANS IN THE INTERVAL. There Grey finds a river such as
De Gonneville describes--a land inhabited by races that have preserved
many of the customs of the "Australians" described by the Norman
captain with whom, as a volunteer in the voyage, had travelled a certain
Nicole Le Fevre, a man of some learning' and a kind of artist, who had
pourtrayed strange beasts, etc., "utterly unknown in Christendom." In
that country', at a very short distance from the coast, Grey discovers
curious paintings, some strikingly resembling the pictures of saints as
represented on the Church windows of the time, one of them bearing some
very remarkable European letters and characters, and last of all he finds
there the head of an European sculptured in the hard rock, evidently with
instruments such as the natives do not possess.

What are we to conclude from these facts? That there is strong evidence
that De Gonneville, who could have landed nowhere else but on Australian
soil, had precisely landed on that part of the country visited by Grey,
and that the paintings discovered are the work of some of his companions.

But although such evidence is strong indeed, it is not yet absolutely
perfect, even for one desirous of solving the problem of fixing the exact
position of the spot visited by the Norman sailor. Others, perhaps, may
give a different interpretation to the figures and the characters
represented above; they are, however, worthy of attracting notice, and if
the result of this investigation is only to draw the attention of those
who are interested in ascertaining the previous history of the country
they inhabit and love, be they members of scientific societies or of
colonial governments, the task undertaken will not prove a thankless one.

One thing is settled, however, beyond the possibility of doubt, and that
is, that De Gonneville landed on no other soil but that of Australia, and
nowhere else but at the mouth of some of the north-western rivers.

The maps of the sixteenth century, known to have existed long before the
voyages of the Dutch and the English, bear witness to the fact that the
north-western part of the coast of Australia was sighted by the
Portuguese on their voyages to and from the East Indies and the Spice
Islands.

A critical examination of these charts, some of which have been
reproduced for the Public Libraries of the chief Australian cities from
the originals in the British Museums, tends to show--although most of the
names of features on the north-west coast are in French--that some of
them appear to have been translated from the Portuguese. The older of
these charts bears the date of the year 1542, but there are two more maps
in the "Bibliotheque Nationale de France" which are still more ancient.
One, which is the work of Guillaume Le Testu, a pilot of Dieppe, shows a
portion of the coast in a fairly correct position, indicating features
which can easily be recognised, although their longitude and latitude are
not exact; the names, which are all in French, do not exhibit any sign of
having been translated from any other language; and there is little doubt
that Le Testu, who published this chart in 1536, must have heard of the
expedition of De Gonneville, which could hardly have failed to attract
attention at the time among the sailors of note in the ports of the
Normandy coast. Considering the state of geographical science at that
epoch, the delineation of the north-west coast of the Australian
continent is certainly as accurate as that of the island of Java and
minor islands in those regions, which were much better known, and there
is in this fact evidence enough that the data upon which Le Testu, Jean
Rotz, and other cartographers worked, must have been fairly accurate. The
Norman pilot shows on his map the entrance of several rivers and features
which closely resemble the outline of this coast as at present known, but
except in the vicinity of the rivers mentioned, the coast on the south
and the north-east is prolonged without data, and merely indicates a
probable extension of land in these directions. The other maps agree
fairly well in this respect, the outlines of very small portions only of
the coast being--susceptible of identification at present. From these
facts we may infer that Guillaume Le Testu probably obtained much of his
information from the report of De Gonneville, whilst Rotz and the authors
of the maps in the British Museum had theirs from Portuguese sources, and
as the latters' delineation of the north-west coast is less accurate, it
may be that the Portuguese sailors, from whose reports this information
was obtained, merely sighted these coasts without attempting to land.

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