448 THE NATIVK TRIBES OF POLTNESFA. 



are the spear, the boomerang, and the waddy ; and their skill in usino- 

 these has been greatly exaggerated. Some of them are dexterous ia^ 

 spearing fish ; but I have frequently put up a mark at five and twenty 

 paces and set four or five natives to work at it with their spears, but I 

 have no recollection of them ever having hit it. When fighting takes 

 place too, it is not an uncommon thing to hear of a battle lasting several 

 hours, and ending without any body being much the worse. They 

 dislike coming to close quarters, so that the waddy, as a weapon of war,. 

 is very harmless when compared with the tomahawk of the Indian. 

 It is used especially for killing small animals, and it is also a legitimate 

 instrument for keeping the vromen in order. That a people of so pri- 

 mitive a character as the Australian should be familiar with such an 

 instrument as the boomerang is a point which to my thinking demands 

 careful investigation at the hands of the anthropologist. But this 

 instrument is not in such general use as is frequently supposed. I 

 have more than once met with tribes who could not muster a boome- 

 rang among them. It may therefore readily be supposed that skill in 

 the use of that weapon varies much. To throw it accurately towards a 

 mark and to make it return to within a few feet of the thrower, requires 

 considerable practice. I have met with natives who could do this with 

 unerring certainty, but they are not the majority. I have seen a parrot 

 brought down from the top of a high tree, and in a second or twa 

 afterwards the boomerang lying at the feet of the thrower ; but it must 

 not be supposed that this sort of thing is done every day, or by all the 

 natives. The man who did it had no rival within my experience among 

 liis countrymen, and perhaps if I had never met him and witnessed his 

 skill on many occasions I should never have credited the boomerang 

 with so much value as, in good hands, I know it to possess. 



It is right I should mention that these remarks, so far as they refer 

 to the incapacity of the Australians, are more applicable to the tribes 

 of the south than to those of the north. Independently of any physical 

 differences, the latter are more warlike than the southerners. Although 

 living in a warmer climate, they are more active and energetic, yet, 

 with this exception, I am not aware that we ought justly to credit them 

 with any higher or more civilized endowments. 



My old friend Burke, who, with his companions. Wells and King, 

 was the first white man to cross the Australian continent, and who 

 perished on his return to Cooper Creek through the culpable blunder- 

 ing of one of his own party, found the natives exceedingly troublesome 



