NEW FACTS CONCERNING THE INTERIOR OF AUSTRALIA.

Colonist, Issue 88, 24 August 1858, Page 4

NEW FACTS CONCERNING THE INTERIOR OF AUSTRALIA.

(From the Sydney Empire, August 3.) COPPER-COLOURED RACES.

It seems to be placed beyond doubt that there exists in the far interior a tribe or family of peculiar people who are coppercoloured, instead of black like the true aborigines. What is stranger still they are deprived of all hair over every part of the person. The fact has been testified to by three separate witnesses; the first, a prisoner, on Cockatoo Island, who connected his story with the fate of Dr. Leichhardt, —the second, a person who, to embellish the same account, stated, that when shown a sovereign, these strange people picked up stones, and pointing westward, plainly signified that nuggets of prodigious size there lay about the ground. The third witness, however, is a respectable surveyor, now in Maitland, who has given to maivy people an unvarnished and doubtless truthful account.

The writer of the Maitland Mercury surmises that these people may be Malays shipwrecked upon the north or northwestern shores of Australia, and that the absence of capillary appendages may be merely the effect of disease, of change of climate and exposure to the sun's heat, and other hardships. This supposition seems not a little probable, and I write only to add a few corroborating facts. Any person perusing the first volume of Captain (now. Sir George) Grey's account of his Explorations on the North-west Coast, near Hanover Bay, must be greatly struck with some figures which were found drawn in bright colors upon the walls of some sandstone caves. These consist chiefly of human figures, whether men or women is scarcely distinguishable, with large heads, blue eyes, noses, but no mouths. The face is painted white, and there is generally a large blue head dress. Some of the figures have necklaces or waistbands, and what is remarkable one individual possesses a sort of red glonj surrounding his head, and is clothed in a single bright red garment which extends to his wrists and ancles. That some superstitious or religious feeling was attached to this last figure appeared likely, because opposite it was a stone upon which a person had been accustomed to sit with his head rubbing against the top of the cave. According to Sir George Grey's idea of beauty, some of these blue-eyed faces were far from bad-looking, in spite of their want of mouths. A small figure was also drawn-in the act of carrying a kangaroo, and! near at hand, a head with wellmarked and intelligent features was cut in relief upon a rock. In the neighbourhood were some large tomb-like mounds.

Now no one can possibly suppose that these were productions of true Australian aboriginies—the style of art is altogether too high, if the evidence of the dresses, of the white faces, &c, did not prove it. We are forced to conclude, then, that Malays, or partially civilised natives of some part of the Arafuca seas were here cast ashore, and resided for a length of time. Again, we know that fleets of Malay vessels or proas are or were in the habit of visiting the north coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria for the purpose of collecting the sea-slug or trepang, which forms a choice article of food, and is purchased by the Chinese, Captain Flinders and Captain King both met these vessels. The natives, however, of the coast were at enmity with these visitors, and probably with good cause, so that it it is not likely that if any Malays were wrecked and cast ashore, as. must often have happened, they would escape being massacred. But if a vessel were driven by stress of weather out of the ordinary course and thrown upon the coast so far to the westward as Hanover Bay, the natives there would probably receive such visitors for the first time and treat them either with unconcern or even kindness.

Many such instances have occurred in former days with runaway convicts <qy sailors wrecked on the south-east coast. For instance, two boys were discovered living among natives at Moreton Bay, by Mr. Oxley's Expedition. They had been driven there in an open boat, and were eagerly received b}' the natives and well lodged and fed, on submitting to the usual process of frequent painting, (Field's Memoirs.) At Port Phillip a runaway convict was discovered in a barbarous condition, he having almost forgotten his native language, and the sealers in Bass's Strait were another instance of degeneration of race. The Victoria River is the only one of the internal'system which is unconnected with the Murray. Rising, as Sir T. Mitchel with surprise remarks, in the fertile district through which it first flows, like any European river, its broad reaches might there float a steamer, and are only inferior to those of the Murray. It now appears that after meandering for hundreds of miles through plains of which no part is habitable except its banks, this river so dwindles away, than in a dry season Capt. Sturt never recognised it. Occasionally at long intervals it may pour a small surplus of flood-waters into Lake Torrens just as the River Darling from time to time pours a surplus into the Murray. But in reality : the..Victoria is a river without an outlet, whose waters are all absorbed by the interior thirsty plains. Central Australia is a region from weieh there is no drainage, and where the streams falling from the interior of the eastern coast ranges are gradual^ dissipated. Geographers will not be satisfied till they learn how many more of such anomalous watercourses may exist, entering Lake Torrens at other points. But it ought to be remembered that the East coast possesses a greater rainfall than any part of Australia, unless, perhaps, intertropical parts, and it is not unlikely, therefore, that the west and north coasts are unable to produce any exterior watershed. Seeing, then, that a copper-coloured family of natives does exist in the far northwest of New South Wales, there can be little doubt that they are of Malay origin, and it is possible that their ancestors were the artists whose productions Sir G. Grey discovered. One or two generations may have passed since that time, and all remembrance of language and arts may have died away during their contact, and, perhaps, intermarriage with barbarians.