
Erueripce—Some Implements, etc., of the Alligator Tribe, Port Essington. 249 
Roth says this is similar to the basket-work made in many other parts of the world, 
as well as fabric from the Swiss Lake dwellings, and bark mats and bark bags made 
by the Ainos of Japan. 
Of an entirely different character are two strong, well made, open, somewhat 
oblong baskets with stiff cane handles, more after the fashion of a White-man’s basket. 
They seem to be made of the spathe of some large inflorescence which Mr. Stockdale 
says is that of the Cabbage Palm. These baskets are termed Mar-ro-ing. 
Baas. 
The bags are entirely made of a coarse, harsh, bi-strand string, and are long, 
narrow at the mouth, and expanding downwards. The largest bag is uncoloured, 
and has a rhomboidal mesh, one and a-half inches in longitudinal diameter. The 
knot used (Pl. xxxu. fig. 9) is as near as possible that known to mariners as the 
swab-hitch or weavers’ knot. Smyth figures* a precisely similar knot used in making 
a fishing-net from the Burdekin River. 
A second bag, of a triangular shape, and stained indian red, is one foot long, 
with a three-quarter inch rhomboidal mesh, formed in the same way as the last bag. 
The third of these large bags is rather pyramidal, the coarse string knitted in 
diagonal lines by a simple twist without knotting, producing a very close mesh. 
The mouth is semi-lunate, and beautifully finished off with a string handle, arising 
from opposite sides. The mesh is formed by simple loops (Pl. xxxu. fig. 10), and is 
identical with that of a fishing-net figured by Smyth from Lake Tyers, South 
Gippsland.+ It is also similar to a Tasmanian bag in the Oxford Museum, and Rotht 
further points out that the mesh is identical with a stitch used in modern point-lace 
work, called the “ plain net or first lace stitch.” The twine consists of fibre “twisted 
into two strands, which are again twisted together to form the cord.” 
The remaining bags are small, and are used, so Mr. Stockdale says, for personal 
adornment —one, for instance, being placed on the breast and another behind each 
ear, &e. One is oblong, six inches long, and stained a dark umber. It is made of a 
bi-twisted coarse strong twine, with a rhomboidal mesh, knotted at the angles, each 
opening of the mesh with a diameter of three-quarters of an inch (PI. xxxu. fig. 11). 
Another of these small bags is triangular, and stained indian red. It is six and 
a-half inches long and four and a-half inches across the base. The twine in this case 
* Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, I. p. 390, f. 225. 
+ Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, I. p. 389, f. 223. 
+ Aborigines of Tasmania, 1890, p. X. f. 3. 
HH 
