330 HUNTING IN THE JUNGLE. 



The boomerang is an arm purely Australian in inven- 

 tion and use, and I have never seen it carried in any 

 other country on the globe. It varies in length from 

 two feet and a half to three feet, and is fashioned from 

 a hard though flexible bit of wood, slightly curved in 

 the middle, rounded at one end, and quite flat at the 

 other. It is not so wholly unlike a Yankee axe-handle 

 in shape, though in color it is almost always as much 

 darker as the color of Australian woods is deeper than 

 those of New England. 



When the native wishes to use his boomerang, he 

 seizes it at the larger end in both hands, the convex 

 side up, then whirling it rapidly round his head with 

 a peculiar motion of the wrist, that gives it its terrible 

 force and accuracy of return, he lets it go into the air. 

 Thus hurled it travels some dozen yards, which is sim- 

 ply preliminary. At the instant it touches the ground 

 it rebounds several feet, and returns upon its track 

 until it reaches the object against which its thrower 

 intended it to strike. 



They tell a curious story of this weapon, so deadly in 

 an Australian's hands. When one of the first explorers 

 returned to England, and told of its marvellous accuracy 

 and execution, the learned doctors at Oxford laughed at 

 him, and one in particular took especial delight in pointing 

 out the physical impossibility of such feats, and sneering 

 at the narrator. A few months afterward this disbe- 

 liever was sent by his confreres to Australia on some 



