BY WALTER E. ROTH, M.R.C.S., B.A., OXON. 47 



tions, by removing sticks and stones out of ,the patient's body. 

 They were invariably very good and tender to their sick, and 

 were great believers in rubbing or massage. Wherever pain 

 was, there the part was rubbed, women rubbing men, and men 

 massaging one another. When suffering from headache, or 

 otherwise sick, the hair would often be cut. Red gum was very 

 commonly taken in cases of dysentery. The bleeding of wounds 

 was usually stanched with blue-gum leaves, the cut surface 

 being subsequently besmeared with mud and earth. In the 

 case of such-like injuries they could always tell whether the 

 damage would prove fatal, or the reverse ; indeed, practising 

 their primitive method of treatment, they could almost invari- 

 ably prognosticate the length of time, even to a month, before 

 full recovery would take place. Their vitality was remarkable. 

 Even in the case of spear-wounds through the body — cases 

 which have been observed — their restoration after a certain 

 lapse of time to perfect health was of no unusual occurrence. 

 The total absence of shock to the system, or any dread of death, 

 may of course have matarially aided the convalescence. Taking 

 all in all, there was but little sickness among these people, 

 ordinary colds and chills perhaps excepted. 



Their methods of hunting were all primitive. Until the 

 advent of the whites, the catching of fish with nets was never 

 dreamt of ; no hooks and lines were used, but the fish speared 

 principally in shallow waters in the estuaries and lakes. Weirs 

 were resorted to in swampy channels, these being formed of 

 brushwood intertwined on stakes, with here and there a pocket, 

 at the bottom of which a kind of basket-work would be con- 

 structed. Any poisoning of the water with noxious plants, or 

 mud dying with the feet, was unknown. Kangaroos were not 

 only stalked and speared, but trapped on favourable ground by 

 digging along their customary tracks deep pitfalls, covered with 

 twigs and earth. These pits were about 8 or 9 feet long, 7 or 8 

 feet deep, and about 10 inches wide, just leaving margin enough 

 for the hind feet to fall into. Wallabies were caught in 

 "drives," fences being built in favourable situations along the 

 ravines, with sometimes wattle-work at the end of the drive, 

 woven into a short square basket-work-like mesh with sticks. 

 A common method of catching emus was, for the hunter to plant 

 himself up amongst the thick foliage of a tree close to the spring, 

 etc., whither the bird was accustomed to come for water. Hidden 



