THE PICTURE CAVES OF AUSTRALIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 82

THE PICTURE CAVES OF AUSTRALIA.

By Jessie Mackay. n. i In the blaze of his later fame as the gieat pro-consul, Sir George Grey's early . services as iui Australian explorer have 1 been mainly forgotten. But the story of '< Lieutenant Grey's expedition in Northi western Australia in 1838, duaing which i he discovered the Ashburton, De Grey, and some three other rivers, is a page of exploration worth remembering, both for j its matter and . its eminently readable 1 style. i In the year 1838 Grey and his party , were camped in the basin of the Glenelg j River, which he described with enthusi- ' asm as a fertile and beautiful land, diversified by hills and glens. The natives who were occasionally seen were taller i and finer in build and feature than any others he had seen in Australia. One day, while rambling among the cliffs and ' downs, the young explorer was struck , with amazement at seeing a great figure apparently gazing down on him from the 1 wall of a sandstone cave which opened ■ wide before him. The figure was painted in vivid red and white, the effect which made it stand out so weirdly to the beholder being gained by staining the >jur- . rounding rock a deep black. The arms t and hands were complete, the latter ! small and tapering, with five fingers ; j the head was disproportionately large and ' drawn full face, with eyes and nose, but I no mouth ; the figure was incomplete, endI ing about the waist ; the eyes were black, J surrounded by red and yellow lines ; the li-ea-ci was- encircled by briglit red rays. In all cases the curves of the body were rounded well, unlike the irregularities of a child's drawing. Grey soon became aware of four other . pictured faces joined together on another Avail of the cave. They seemed the faces of women ; their expression was devout and mild ; their regard seemed fixed

j upon the tall figure just described. One I wore a necklace ; others showed the edge ' of a dress reaching up to the armpits, | but not over the shoulder. All wore ! a curious swathing head-dress of deepest blue ; none were even so far complete as the larger figure, but evidently all were by the same hand. Other caves were found in the vicinity, also filled with figures — men, with kangaroos and other creatures of the chase. (Fifty or 60 figures were found in this I cave alone, but from the difference in i tiie workmanship Grey pronounced that most of them had been done by a draughtsman far inferior to the creator of the five first. Here, too, was seen a most remarkable and erie picture of a single hand in black, outlined on a ground ! of pure white, which seemed to point to a small inner cave. I The whole district seemed* full of picI tured caves ; the most remarkable of which, besides what have been described, revealed a figure 10ft high, seemingly ai man, clad in a red robe from neck to feet. The face showed eyes only ; the figure was complete, though the hands and | fpet were ill-drawn and badly proportioned. Whether from actual age or stress nf weather this figure was much more decayed than the others. Grey was irresibtibly reminded of the princes described in the 23rd chapter of E^ekiel : — -"She 1 saw men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with veimilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after tho manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity." One other wonder Grey noted in this neighbourhood — a sculptured head, smooth with age, of which the fine Caucasian lines and careful workmanship impressed him as impossible foT a savage to achieve. Seventy years have passed since these ■ curious pictures were discovered ; but it i remained for a later explorer, in a book [ of the last decade, to link them with a strange and fascinating romance of the sea, ripe for a novelist's hand. In his charming book on Australian exploration

Ernest Favenc, himself an explorer of note, has gathered up the scattered threads of the subject, tabulating the various expeditions, both in land and maritime, which determined in course of time the limits and physical features of the ancient Terra Australis.

Of these t-ales of derring-do he chronicles few approach in interest that of the longdebated and still debatable voyage of De Gonneville in 1503. De Gonneville was a hardy, honest Norman sea captain, who, making for some Eastern port, was beaten down by storms from near the Cape of Good Hojte, and carried into a tropic sea, where he was long becalmed. Want of water compelled him to make for lacd at any risk, and, noting the flight of certain sea-birds, he shaped a course which brought him to a strange but fertile and hospitable country, where he anchored at the mouth of a river. Impelled by that curious geographical obsession which possessed most medieval explorers, he called the country the "Southern Indies," referring to it familiarly, however, as Australia, or "Terre Australe," and its people as Australians. He stayed there for six months, refitting bis ship, and observing the land and the people. The latter he described as a noble, kindly race, destitute of arts and letters, indeed, but neither lawless nor altogether primitive in the system of tribal government they enjoyed under their "kings." while certain simnle manufactures were known to them. They were a warlike race, and he had to decline aiding them on inltund frays ; but to the European strangers they were kindness itself. A curious fact was that the dominant class among these "Indians" was almost white. So friendly did the sailors and their hosts become that the "King,'* Aroeac, consented to let one of his sons, called Essomeric, with an older companion, Namoa., accompany the captain to France. De Gonneville gave a solemn assurance that he would bring the lad back ia 20 moons ; and though, needless to say, the promise was never fulfilled, the honest Norman's after-behaviour to bis "Indian" ward showed that it was made in good faith. After erecting a large wooden cross, which the natives swore to reverence and protect, the Frenchmen sailed away. Sickness broke out at sea, and Namoa died, but Essomeric reached France, no longer a barbarous Australian, but the Christian god-son of the good captain, who gave him his own second name in baptism, as, long years after, he gave him his fortune by bequest. More than this, the lad proving intelligent and adaptable, De Gonneville procured him an appointment in France, and married him to a young relative of his own — a fact which for centuries militated against the possibility of the waif belonging to such a wretched race as the modern aboriginals.

But we anticipate. Four hundred years ago the doom of the would-be colonising Frenchman was as fixed as it is to-day ; poor De Gonneville, steering joyfully home with his precious cargo of charts, pictures, journals, and curios, at has own doorstep, so to speak, fell into the hands of an English pirate off Guernsey, and lost everything but life. The precious tokens of his discovery were gone, and though he and 'his officers signed the declaration which he drew up from memory, the matter was shelved, and all hope of Toval aid faded away. De Gonneville died after some years of uneventful industry ; so, in fulness of years, did Essomeric. Bait some 60 years after kfoe eventful voyage a certain Canon Paulmier, a mam of knowledge and ability, in petdt-'oning the Pope to send a. mission to "Tea-re Australe." quoted largely from the declaration of his deceased relative. For Canon Paulmier, whose sympathy burned f!ius towards dark brethren, was no other than the grandson of Essomeric the Australian ! Nothing came of the application. But about the middle of the eighteenth century a Scotchman named Callender contrived to translate part or tihe whole of De Gonneville's declaration, his version strengthening the belief which prevailed ther and after tliat De Gonneville's "Terre Australe " was really Madagascar. The old document lay in some Norman official cupixjaird till 1873, when its reappearance started a ridiculous surmise that "Terre Australe" was South America. But a more faithful translation and more accurate geographical knowledge tend to confirm the belief that De Gonneville actually landed in Australia, though his narrative in certain minor points differs from the actual life of tihe natives now. And could an educated European allow so low a being as an Australian block to marry into his own family?

Here comes in the theory of Ernest Favenc. De Gonneville, he says, landed at the mouth of the Glenelg River. The Frenchman's account of the pleasant land, with its wealth of fish, and 'beast, and bird, tallies mainly with Lieutenant Grey's impressions. Most particularly does Mr Favenc lay stress on the picture cave 6, with their strange hooded female r aces adoring the rayed figure above them, the devotional effect of the wliole being heightened by what appear to be worn and ancient steps leading up to the cave moufth as to a shrine. He has no hesitation in declaring these to be a mediaeval presentment of the Virgin and wors-h'pp-Lng saints, the strange garb being one of the familiarising methods of the early Catholic missionaries, who accommodated their pictures of sacred tilings to the outer fashions of tlieir converts. One of the figures has certain symbols on her headdress which seem Roman letters halfobliterated. The sculptured head, too, in its sandstone cave, he takes to be part of the French artist's memorial work. And the fair rulera of the dark Indians — the people to whom Essomeric belonged? Who were they? Mr. Favene shares the opinion of Captain King, and declares •them to have been Malays. The early communication! known to exist between Malaya and old Australia may easily have been greater than we imagine, and may even nave extended to a species of continental colony over&eae. But there is

notihing Malayan in the hooded antl painted figures of the caves. One paint occurs to the student of Australian antiquities. The faces in question were drawn without mouths — ai curious omission for * European draughtsman. But the travellers wlio noted- the East Coast- pictures on the rocks of Piper's Point recorded the same striking trait, in the human subjects there. It is perfectly possible that a strange picture might be copied in the course of generations by native artists at the other side of the continent, but unless we can be definitely assured that the Piper's Point pictures were more recent than the Glenelg frescoes, the coincidence tells strongly- again6t the theory of European agency. And at this point we must have the fascinating tale of the old Norman voyager and the possibly allied mystery of the western caves. Pertiaps some later historian may throw further light on this obscure chapter of exploration.