240 Macueay Memorrat Vouume. 
The sword in use at Rockingham Bay is quite of the type c, with a very short 
g : { 4 
handle and a long blade, sharp at both edges, four feet nine inches long, and weighs 
from eight to ten pounds.* 
In the Herbert River District,+ says Lumholtz, the sword is curved after the 
Mackay type, and coloured with white cross-bars. At Port Hinchinbrook, Mr. G. 
EK. Dalrymplet saw swords made of a hard and tough wood like brigalow, and curved, 
with a point like that of an infantry sword. The handle is fined off, and large enough 
for one hand only. It will be at once apparent from a perusal of these quotations 
how general the same type of sword is over a large area of Queensland, differing only 
in detail. Even in Central Australia, about Cooper’s Creek, the sword, or something 
very like it, is in existence ; for Howitt refers to a “great boomerang,” about five 
feet long, which is never thrown, but used as a “club or broadsword at close 
quarters.”"§ Knight,|| in his “Study of the Savage Weapons at the Centennial 
Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876,” figures these swords as Victorian throwing-sticks ! 
The relative proportions of one of these swords and the native using it is well shown 
in one of the plates of Mr. A. Meston’s “Queensland Railway and Tourists’ Guide.” 
FIcHtTinG-StTIckKs. 
Under the name of Aon-nung, R. B. Smyth figures a more or less cylindrically 
pyriform stick pointed at both ends, varying from two feet six inches to three feet in 
length. ‘It is employed in close combat principally, and dreadful wounds are inflicted 
by it sometimes. The warrior, holding it with the right hand by the middle, makes 
stabs into the neck, breast, and sides of his opponent, and not seldom forces the sharp 
pomt into the eye. The stick is also used as a missile.”** 
Several weapons, of a slightly more pyriform shape than Smyth’s figure, are 
in the collection, made of a dark heavy wood. They are longitudinally grooved, the 
distal end being rather larger than the proximal, which is cross-hatched. There is a 
good deal of variation in the length of the distal point beyond the pyriform enlarge- 
ment. The longest is two feet five and a-half inches, weighing fourteen ounces. 
Another form of the Aon-nxung of the Alligator River Tribe (Pl. xxx. fig. 5) 
resembles the last, except that it is quite smooth, blunt proximally, and provided 
* Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, [. p. 303, f. 67. 
+ Amongst Cannibals, 1890, p. 332. 
t Journ. R. Geogr. Soc., 1865, XXXV., p. 205. 
§ Smyth’s Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, IT. p. 304. 
| Ann. Report Smithsonian Inst. for 1879 [1880], p. 227, f. 28. 
§] Queensland Railway and Tourists’ Guide, p- 144, pl. 
** Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, I. p. 302, f. 64. 
