BOTANY BAY.
bay on the south-east coast of New Holland, in 34° S. Lat. 208° 37' W. Long. discovered by Captain Cook in 1770, and so named by him, from the great variety and abundance of plants found in its vicinity. Botany Bay, however, is now used to denote in general a British settlement, since established in the same part of New Holland, extending over a wide tract of country, and daily enlarging.
The climate of Botany Bay is one of the most tem perate and agreeable in the world, the soil is fertile, and luxuriant crops reward labours of the agriculturist. Trees of immense size grow in the forests, fit for all the purposes of ship-building or domestic economy, and the fruits of Europe and Asia, as well as the ani mals now naturalised there, are equally rich and pro ductive as in their native climes. But the indigenous quadrupeds are few, none of any note frequenting the neighbourhood, except the kangaroo, a singular animal, peculiar to the continent of New Holland and its ad jacent islands. There are many birds of beautiful plumage, and numerous fishes are found in the adjacent seas.
The natives of no country, hitherto discovered, are in a state so rude and savage as those of Botany Bay : and there seems also some difference in their personal conformation. Most of them are nearly as black as negroes, others of a copper colour : their heads are un commonly long, and their extremities slender. Those who dwell in the woods, exclusively, are said to have longer legs and arms than the rest, which is a fact well deserving of investigation. Their teeth are white and even, their noses flat, though their hair is not like that of the African tribes ; they have wide nostrils, sunk eyes, and bushy eyebrows. The coun tenances of the men, and particularly those of the wo men, notwithstanding their disfiguration, are far from being disagreeable.
Permanent dwellings are unknown to the natives in their migratory lives ; an overhanging crag, or the recesses of a cavern, serves them for shelter from the iuclemency of the weather ; the woodman is protected by the bark of a tree bent in the middle, while its two ends are stuck in the earth : and some, more stationary, take up their abode in miserable huts, formed princi cipally of the same substance. There they repose, men women, and children indiscriminately; and the time of sleep, which is very profound, is frequently taken for the moment of assassination. Food is precarious ; the scarcity of quadrupeds renders a kind of traps and snares, constructed by them, rarely successful ; birds are generally beyond their reach, and hence, in addition to fruits, their chief support is derived from fishing. They likewise devour a kind of larva or caterpillar, which those Europeans who have ventured to taste it, describe as savoury food ; and they make a sort of paste of fern root and ants bruised together, to which the eggs of those insects are added in their season.
A temporary alliance, resembling marriage, is known among those savages. It is, in the power of
the husband to repudiate his wife, but her infidelity towards him is severely punished. When a man wish es to marry, he selects a woman from another tribe with which his own is at enmity ; but instead of solicit ing the object ol his choice, he steals upon her in a place ol secrecy. There she is stunned by the blows of a club on the head and shoulders, and, while the blood streams from her wounds, she is dragged away and ravished by the main force of the assailant, when beyond the danger of pursuit. The female then be comes a wife, and is incorporated into the tribe of her husband. No feuds follow such horrible outrages : the only retaliation by the woman's tribe being a simi lar violence, when wives are required by their men. Polygamy is practised, and chastity is held in no esteem.
The names bestowed on children are commonly those of a beast, a bird, or a fish, such as that of the kangaroo or some other animal. Between eight and sixteen, the septum of the nose is perforated to receive a reed or bone, which is thought a great ornament : but the most important ceremony,though the real object of it is yet un discovered, consists in knocking out a front tooth of the youths who are about to attain the age and privileges of manhood. Much preparation is previously made : the youths, in the first place who are to undergo the opera tion, are selected, and, when collected together, they must sleep on a certain spot, and in a certain posture. A number of young savages wearing girdles, with wooden swords stuck into them behind, and reeurving on the back, somewhat like the tail of a dog, run upon their hands and feet around the youths, and every time, on passing, throw up the sand and dust upon them, By this part of the ceremony, the qualities of the dog are supposed to be imparted. Other motions imitating those of the kangaroo, and one of these animals made of grass, deposited at the feet of the youths, is supposed to give them the power of hunting and killing it. After various mummeries, quite unintelligible to Europeans, an operator dextrously strikes out the front tooth from each of the youths, among whom it is a point of honour not to utter the smallest complaint. But even though they did, their cries would be drowned amid the uninter rupted noise which prevails among the actors in this barbarous scene. The operation being finished, the youths are all ranged on the long trunk of a tree, whence, on a signal given, they suddenly start up, and rushing forward, drive men, women, and children before them, and also set fire to the grass wherever they pass. They are then received into the class of men, and are privi leged to use weapons and carry off females for wives. The tooth thus extracted, is the object of certain super stitions hitherto ill understood, and sometimes hung round the neck of the women : to part with them to strangers has been supposed offensive to the natives.