We returned, our object unachieved, to our boat, and so back to Coggera Cove, where we found tea and chocolate prepared in the renowned "black pot," that figures so much in bush life, off which we made an excellent repast. With true kindliness Mr. Hill shared what we had brought with us with the aborigines, who, on their part, showed themselves very obliging and attentive.
A second excursion, still in Mr. Hill's company, was made after craniological specimens to Long Bay, twelve miles distant, among whose thickets a few natives had been residing for some weeks. The road thither passed through gum tree forests, varied by wide grass plains covered with the many-blossomed _Metrosidero_, with its long deep red stamens, and brilliant _Melaleuca_, its twigs also nearly covered with white flowers, among which rose the tapering flower-stem, ten or twelve feet high, of the _Xanthorrhea_, something like reed-mace, surrounded by flights of humming-birds, which were imbibing its delicious nectar with their long bills. Great quantities of little birds were swarming about the brushwood and rushes, occasionally coming quite trustfully so close to us that we could have caught them with a butterfly net. We had been riding perhaps an hour or two when Mr. Hill suddenly began to call in the native manner. Those forthwith summoned by this quite unique sound replied from the thicket, as if recognizing the approach of a friend, and in a minute or two more we found ourselves in the midst of a number of aborigines of both sexes, mostly naked, or with a coarse woollen cloth around them, lying at full length on the ground in listless ease. Close by was a fire, over which was suspended a kettle filled with water. A couple of mangy hounds covered with sores were basking in the sun, heedless of the footfall of our horses, lying as indifferent as their masters till we had dismounted and seen our beasts attended to.
It is extraordinary to see how few necessaries these people seem to have, and how little ambition they have to better themselves, so long as they can indulge their vagabondizing propensities. There is assuredly no nation on earth that so aptly illustrates Goldsmith's words,
Those we were now visiting had come from the districts of Shoal Haven, Port Stephens, and Illawara. There were three men and as many women, one of whom, a Mestiza, named Sarah, with two half-blood little children. One of these, which, although above two years of age, was still at the breast, had a skin quite white, red cheeks, and light-blue eyes, and could scarcely be distinguished from the child of white parents. These presented so characteristic a type of the race, that we could not resist an attempt to make with them some of those admeasurements of the body already alluded to, while the artist attached to the Expedition delineated their appearance.