WONDERS OF TRACK FOLLOWING 297 



after hours of patient toil, capture it. As a test, I have 

 flung a sixpenny-bit as far as I could into the densest 

 scrub I could find, into which a white man could not 

 penetrate without cutting a way, and in which he could 

 certainly never find so small a coin as that named ; yet a 

 blackfellow would make straight for the spot where the 

 sixpence fell, and in a few moments come back with it in 

 his hand. I have purposely left a shilling on the road, 

 hiding it under a stone. A blackfellow followed my 

 mundowa, or track, five miles along the road, instantly 

 detected that I had moved a stone out of its place, lifted 

 it, and triumphantly held up the shilling. I could multiply 

 such instances by the dozen. The blacks never lose any 

 of their own property. If by chance they drop anything, 

 no matter how small, they go back the moment they miss 

 it, and never fail to recover it. The black trackers 

 attached to the police have rendered great services by 

 their marvellous powers of tracing criminals, and they 

 serve as a standing menace and preventive to offenders of 

 their own race, who know that they will assuredly be 

 tracked down if they offend against the laws of the 

 white man. 



Of the general habits and customs of the blacks of 

 Australia I can take but a cursory glance. As I have 

 said, they often go entirely without clothing, and in no 

 circumstances wear more than a scanty cloak, and perhaps 

 a rag round the waist. Often they are content to live in 

 the open, without dwelling of any kind, in cold weather 

 erecting a lean-to of hurdles to shelter them from the 

 wind. Their huts, called gunyas, are very rude attempts 

 at house-building; in fact, the black does not display a 

 similar ingenuity in the erection of his dwelling to that 

 which he shows in the construction of his weapons and 

 implements. The property of a blackfellow, of which he 

 thinks as much as any great landed proprietor can do of 

 his estate, seldom consists of more articles than his gin, or 

 wife, can carry on her back. These are nets and spare twine, 

 made by the patient women, a tobacco pipe or two, and a 

 small supply of tobacco. Probably he treasures up a few 



