The Aborigines 199 



skill, cunning, and endurance. Emus are driven 

 into traps and pits, or else speared, after much 

 patient stalking. Snares are set for smaller 

 birds, which are also killed with the boomerang. 

 Swans and ducks are taken by swimming and 

 diving, the head of the hunter being concealed 

 in a mass of aquatic weeds. Kangaroos are 

 tracked and ' speared, or run down with dogs, 

 while the dogs also assist in driving the wallabies 

 into snares and nets. The black-fellow catches 

 opossums by climbing the trees in which they 

 live, sounding the trunks for hollows in which 

 these animals shelter. 



Fishing is carried on in several ways. In an- 

 gling, they employ the sucker-fish as a natural 

 hook, but a more favoured method of taking fish 

 is that of stupefying them by treading the water 

 until it becomes very muddy, or by the use of 

 some vegetable poison. They also make nets 

 into which the fish are driven, and some tribes 

 show great skill in spearing fish. 



The manufactures of the black- fellow are not 

 limited to the fashioning of his weapons, for the 

 women make many articles of string. Some of 

 this string is twisted from the hair of human 

 beings, and animals, but the greater part of it is 

 made of the vegetable fibre of the spinifex grass. 

 This is chewed and soaked to get rid of the 

 adhesive matter, and then twisted into strands 

 in a very businesslike fashion. From the string 

 thus made, nets for fishing and hunting are 



