A Stone Dagger fo?' D^iellin^ . 35 



7 ft. in length over all, 18 in. beam, 9 in. depth. There were no 

 thwarts, and the slim, lithe native sat on the bottom, or often on a 

 mat of the same bark of which the canoe was made, and paddled 

 with a short length of palm leaf gathered and tied at one end like 

 a scoop. In shoal water he preferred to pole the light craft. lyike 

 the birch-bark canoe of the North American Amerind these Aus- 

 tralian canoes were light and easily transported over land, and 

 when not in use were carefully cached in the liminal thicket. 



It is not surprising that the early voyagers, and even some of 

 a later daj^ who were careful observers should have supposed that 

 the Australians had no canoes, except the dugouts they secured 

 from the Malay traders along the northern shores. Not only were 

 those made by them small and inconspicuous, but they were not in 

 common use where the white man was likely to go. Smyth gives, . 

 in the work already referred to, a full account of the incorrect 

 statements of travellers about Australian boats. 



A Stone Dagger for Duelling. 



BY WM. T. BRIGHAM, 



Another of the interesting implements that I brought back 

 from my recent visit to Australia was a stone dagger neatly made 

 by splitting from quartzite and handled in a suitable way with a 

 ball of the tenacious gum used by the natives and called by the 

 whites "black bo}^" As shown in Fig. 2, the dagger is provided 

 with a sheath of bark ornamented to a greater extent than com- 

 mon with Australians. The total length is 7.5 in. The most re- 

 markable thing about it is the use to which it is dedicated, although 

 as in the case of most primitive implements it served many pur- 

 poses. Thus among the Arunta tribe, to which this dagger be- 

 longed, in former times, a fire-stick was also used to circumcise 

 boys, before this stone knife was found more suitable. 



Two men in fighting with this weapon clasp arms about each 

 other's naked body and cut into the opponent's buttocks and 

 thighs, but the rules of the game seem to prohibit cutting else- 



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