interest. The female complexion is usually of a pale brown, and very few show much red on the cheeks. The boys are different, and generally have bright, clear complexions with red cheeks, and some would hardly be distinguished from children of European parents. There is very little difference or peculiarities in the colour of the eye. The young half-castes take more after the character of the male parents than the mother. The nose is usually broad, the mouth large, and lips thick, but no feature strongly or coarsely marked. When the half-castes attain maturity they exhibit aboriginal blood more strongly. They become fleshy and coarse, and have repulsive countenances. Both sexes deteriorate after the age of fourteen. The children of a half-caste female and a white man are difficult to distinguish from children of European parents. They may change after reaching the age of maturity, and this will much depend upon their surroundings and modes of living. A training in a good school with white children as associates, and a rough life in the bush with the blacks, is very different, and will have great effect upon the young.

The tribes of Central Australia speak different dialects, and attain their names from rivers and granges, or even animals. They pay but little respect to old age, except in the case of a leader. These people, like other natives, are superstitious, and have great faith in their medicine men. They do not appear to have made much use of the skins of wild animals for clothing, seeming to prefer nakedness. They show a marked appreciation for the dog, and any mongrel is welcomed in their camp. They treat him well, and think it a great crime to kill a dog. The natives are clever at hunting, and at fighting show the same courage as most of their race.

Both sexes are believers in tattooing, and in some cases the designs are such as to mark relationships.

They do not look upon the white man with feelings of kindness. The black thinks the white man should not hunt the kangaroo, unless the black is also permitted to hunt the white man's bullocks, cows, and pigs.

They show more cordiality and sympathy towards each other than is found in all natives. They sit around their camp fire at night, and sing their native songs and tell their native stories, until one by one the blacks becoming sleepy steal away to their miamias to sleep. A child at birth is sometimes named by the mother after the place at which she imagines she conceived it. They are not believers in close marriages, but prefer crosses. The marriage age is from fourteen to fifteen years.

When holding a corroboree, which sometimes lasts ten days, great sexual indulgence is permitted. The women are often taken by their tribe to a spot near another tribe and left there, and any familiarities between the women and men are considered acts of friendship by all parties. These mutual exchanges seldom cause any ill-feelings, except where a couple become too fond of each other, and are loth to part, or return to the rightful lord or spouse. A native would be considered very churlish if he refused to submit his lubra to the kindness of a man of another tribe during these rejoicings.

When a woman gets married, she has her nose bored by her husband. This makes her his wife.

About puberty the boys are circumcised.

The women have a strong aversion to a large family, believing three or four children quite enough for her to feed and look after. When she has an increase of this number, she quietly disposes of the surplus without being asked questions.

To promote the growth of a girl's breasts, she is painted during the mumbling of a chant or dirge.

She is then taken away to her mother, and does not return to the camp until the paint is worn off. There is no actual proof of any fuller development by this practice. The breasts of native women are generally flabby and baggy.

The natives of Central Australia do not believe in natural death, no matter what their age may be. They say death is the result of some magical influence through the power of an enemy. Should the dying man mention the name of any person, he is regarded as the guilty man. If not, the medicine man is appealed to, and he invariably finds out the culprit, according to his belief; and the avenger bides a suitable time, when, accompanied by the medicine man, he waylays his victim, and stealthily creeps upon him and spears him. The medicine man goes to the dying man, who is unconscious, and covers up the wound, bringing the patient to his camp, where he dies without recovering consciousness. The medicine man has great influence with the blacks, and his actions are seldom questioned.

THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AUSTRALIAN

LITERATURE

BY ARTHUR PATCHETT MARTIN

Late Editor of the "Melbourne Review," and Author of the "Life and Letters of Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke," &c., &c.

In the strict logical sense of the words, there is--and there can be no such thing as Australian literature, any more than there can be a South African, a Canadian, or even an American literature. Should some free and enlightened citizen of the United States feel outraged by this assertion, let him calmly consider for a moment the case of the ancient Greeks. That wonderful race, it will be admitted, were our supreme guides as well as forerunners in civilisation, our superiors in the science of colonisation, and our masters in the art of literature and all other arts.

From a small centre about the size of Yorkshire, or the Scottish Lowlands, the Greek spread his exquisite language, his beautiful creeds, his arts, his commerce, and his warlike arms from the Pillars of Hercules to the Sea of Azof. He converted the Mediterranean into a Greek lake, and his colonies extended from Massilia -the modern French city of Marseilles-and from the coasts of Africa on the west, to those extensive and troubled lands which we call Asia Minor on the east.

Even under the subsequent Roman dominion, Greek remained the literary language of the civilised world. St. Paul's very Epistle to the Romans, as well as the rest of the sacred books on which the Christian religion is based, were written, not in the local tongue

of Judea, nor in that of Imperial Rome, but in the language of Greece. The whole of the seven apostolic churches of Christendom arose in what were Greek Asiatic colonies, and the speech and culture of this marvellous people long outlived the political downfall of the mother country.

Now, when we speak of Greek literature, we do not narrow the phrase to the works of those writers born and bred within the circumscribed area of Greece itself. According to tradition, Homer, the first of Greek poets, was an Ionian colonist of Asia Minor; so, too, Herodotus, the father of History, and Sappho, the first and greatest of Greek poetesses, were "colonial" Greeks. It is as though Shakespeare had been born in Sydney, or Milton in Melbourne.

It should never be forgotten that the United States of America, though politically independent-never again, I trust, hostile are still, in the old Greek sense, England's greatest colony. The Greek colonies, in fact, generally began their career with a declaration of independence, but they remained Greek just the same. As Carlyle put it (speaking of England and America), “ we are both alike the subjects of King Shakespeare!" Longfellow-or Walt Whitman-in so far as he is a genuine poet, and has produced verse that appeals to us by sincerity of thought and beauty of form, is equally with Tennyson one of the glories of our common English literature, and it matters not a whit that the one should have been born and bred in Old England and the other in New England.

But it is convenient to speak of "American" authors and "American" literature; and in that spirit, when I use the phrase "Australian literature," I mean the works of those few writers who reflect the life, describe the scenery, and reveal the social conditions of Australia. If these writings should be found to appeal to the critical judgment and to touch the