AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 451 



While I am endeavouring to correct some inaccuracies which 

 have appeared in our own Proceedings in the description of rock 

 pictures it may be well to also invite attention to erroneous 

 accounts of other doings of the aborigines published elsewhere. 

 It has truly been said that "no man has been more misrepresented 

 than the Australian blackfellow." 



The following is a detailed and very early account of hunting 

 a kangaroo in Western Australia, according to Captain (afterwards 

 Sir George) Grey : — 



" The mode of tracking a kangaroo vintil it is wearied out is the one 

 which beyond all others excites the admiration of the natives ; this calls 

 out every qualification prized by savages : skill in tracking, endurance of 

 hunger and thirst, unwearied bodily exertion, and lasting perseverance. To 

 perform this feat a native starts on the tracks of a kangaroo, which he 

 follows until he sights it, when it flies timidly before him ; again he pursues 

 the track, and again the ainmal bounds from him ; and this is repeated until 

 nightfall, when the native lights his fire and sleeps upon the track. With 

 the first light of day the hunt is resumed, and towards the close of the second 

 day, or in the course of the third, the kangaroo falls a victim to its pursuer. 

 None but a skilful huntsman, in the pride of youth and strength, can perform 

 this feat, and one who has frequently' practised it always enjoys great renown 

 amongst his fellows."^ 



G. S. Lang, in describing the native fishing weir at Brewarrina, 

 says : — 



" The great weir for catching fish on the upper Darling at Brewarrina is, 

 both for conception and execution, one of the most extraordinary works 

 recorded of any savage tribe. ... It forms an immense labyrinth of 

 stone walls about three to four feet high. . . . The lower parts of the 

 walls are so solidly and skilfully built with large heavy stones, which must 

 have been brought from a considerable distance and with great combined 

 labour, that they have stood every flood from time immemorial."'^ 



If the reader refers to my article on the aboriginal fisheries at 

 Brewarrina^ it will be seen that the walls of the fishing pens were 

 formed of boulders of various sizes washed out of the bar of desert 

 sandstone which crosses the bed of the Darling River immediately 

 above them, and were consequently lying on the spot ready for 

 the native builders, instead of having been " brought a consider- 

 able distance with great combined labour." 



The ludicrous and impossible method of hunting a kangaroo 

 given by Sir George Grey would merely amuse a man accustomed 

 to Australian bush life, but the account has been accepted and 

 handed on by an English author, N. W. Thomas, in his " Natives 

 of Australia," pp. 103-104. G. S. Lang's fabulous conclusion 

 respecting the building of the fishing weir at Brewarrina has also 

 been incorporated in the same work at p. 94. 



1" Journs. Two Expeds. Discov. in N-West and W. .•\ustralia in 1837 to 1839 " (London, 1841), 

 vol. 2, pp. 27b-274. 



2"The Aborigines of Australia " (Melbourne, 1865), pp. 19-20. 



ajourn. Roy. Soc, N.S.W., XXXVIL, 147-9. 



