410 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E 



themselves from the tropical rains and await until the country 

 should become passable ; and that it was most probable these un- 

 fortunates were murdered on their way from that point to Port 

 Essington, as they would have to pass through country occupied 

 by warlike and bloodthirsty tribes. Gregory found the hut in 

 1856, and judged that the trees had been cut six or seven years, 

 so that we may fix the probable date of the Elsey camp as 

 the rainy season, January 1849 — which would be nearly thirteen 

 months from the date of Leichhardt's start. No relief coming to the 

 main party, and their stores exhausted, they would be at the mercy 

 of the blacks and may have secured their f I'iendship and protection. 

 The use of iron tools as described by Gregory would thus be ac- 

 counted for, and I may here remark that it is now well known that 

 the natives in that northern portion of Australia do not construct 

 huts. The small stone erections described by Gregory as huts, 

 met with on the Victoria River, are used by the natives as 

 traps, in which the hunter concealing himself, flutters a pigeon 

 overhead, which lures the hawks to descend, and get knocked over 

 when pouncing on the prey. 



Next, I come to what I consider traces of the I'econnoitring 

 party sent on westward from the Pitcherry Creek w^aters. 



The interesting paper contributed by Mr. Worsnop to the South 

 Australian Branch of tlie Australian Royal Geographical Society, 

 in 1887, entitled " Pre-historic Native Art," contained a number 

 of illustrations of native drawings. I had studied this subject 

 for many years and am familiar with native art from Cambridge 

 Gulf to Cape Howe ; but amongst Mr. Worsnop's illustrations I 

 found what I recognised as a singular depai'ture from any native 

 drawings I had ever met with, and which I attributed to un- 

 educated Europeans — one was a " rock hieroglyphic " found by 

 Arthur John Giles, in 1873, near the junction of Sullivan's Creek 

 and Finke River, consisting of seven vertical straight lines, some 

 distance apart, and having an oi'b at the bottom of each line, but 

 not touching. A wave-like double line crossed the vertical lines 

 about midway, in the spaces between these vertical lines on both 

 sides of the wave lines were two treble half-circle lines, and above 

 and below these half -circles, were arrows formed with two barbs 

 as used by surveyors ■ for the first three spaces these half-circles 

 and arrows were represented, the arrows pointing in dift'erent 

 directions and the half-circles changed in position ; in the fourth 

 the half-cii'cles were only on one side of the wave line, but the 

 arrows were on both, in the remaining spaces the arrows only 

 were shown. To me this appeared to be the work of a European 

 unable to write, endeavouring to make a record of so many 

 months spent with natives on a creek. The orb denotes the moon, 

 the spaces the months, the wave line a creek, the double half- 

 circles camps, and the arrows indicate the direction of the hunting 

 parties in search of food. As the season advances the fixed 



