230 Macreay Memoriat Vouume. 
pipeclay, or with white transverse bands. One of these spears has a slate-rock head 
in place of the quartzite, and being in an unfinished state displays the mode of 
manufacture, the gum and string lashing being present, but no pipeclay covering or 
colouration. The longest spear is eight and a-half feet, the shortest seven feet, and 
the average length eight feet. 
This is unquestionably the “ war spear of the North Coast” figured by Hyre,* 
having a quartzite head six inches long, and exceeding in total length the previous 
ineasurements, being nine and a-half feet, but a still more formidable variety of this 
spear is one figured by the same author in which the stone head is jagged.t The late 
R. B. Smyth also makes a reference to these north coast spears, remarking} :— 
“They are ornamented with longitudinal grooves in bands alternating with plain 
spaces, and the colours used are red, yellow, and white, the white often appearing in 
dots on the other colours. The weight of these spears varies from ten ounces to 
eleven and three-quarter ounces.” For the heads Smyth gives the length eight 
inches, and for the shafts nine to nine feet six inches. 
The A/Lettch, or war spear, is thrown with the O770-korr-ok, or sabre womerah, 
according to Mr. Stockdale, the proximal end of the shaft being cup-shaped for the 
reception of the womerah-tooth, lashed round with twine, covered with gum-cement, 
and whitened like the stone heads. On the other hand, that very careful observer 
Macgillivray says a stiff flat womerah, the 4z//etta probably, is used.§ The 
quartzite, adds he, is procured from the mountains behind the Port Essington 
isthmus. The stone-headed or war spear of the Kimberley district, termed A7?//awal 
by Hardman,|| the latter says, is thrown by the Gualealing | = 4illetta| womerah, 
which lends support to Macgillivray’s statement. My deceased friend states that it 
is “only in the north that flint is used as a spear-head proper ; and this custom, I 
inay say, extends across the whole of the northern portion of Australia generally. 
But below from 20° to 30° south latitude wooden spears prevail. Among the many 
tribes it is the custom to insert rough chips of basalt or hard metamorphic rock, and 
in latter days glass, along the edges of the spear-heads, but it is only the most 
northern tribes who tip their weapons with single flint-heads.”% 
An interesting but small group of spears, five in number, used both for fighting 
and hunting, are made either of saplings or reeds, and tipped with very sharply 
pointed and round hardwood heads. The shafts are ruddled, and united to the heads 
* Journ. Exped. Discovery Central Australia, &c., 1845, IT. t. 6, f. 4. 
+ Ibid. £. 5. 
+ Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, I. p. 308, f. 85. 
§ Voyage of the ‘‘ Rattlesnake,” 1852, II. p. 147. 
|| Proc. R. Irish Acad., 1888, I. (3), No. 1, p. 64. 
{1 Proc. R. Irish Acad., 1888, I. (3), No. 1, p. 65. 
