24 AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 



CHAPTER X. 



TOOLS. 



The natives have few tools ; the principal one is the stone axe, which resembles 

 the stone celts found in Europe. This useful and indispensable implement is of 

 various sizes. It is made chiefly of green stone, shaped like a wedge, and ground 

 at one end to a shai-p edge. At the other end it is grasped in the bend of a doubled 

 piece of split sapling, bound with kangaroo sinews, to form a handle, which is 

 cemented to it with a composition of gum and shell lime. This cement is made 

 by gathering fresh wattle gum, pulling it into small pieces, masticating it with 

 the teeth, and then placing it between two sheets of green bark, which are put 

 into a shallow hole in the ground, and covered up with hot ashes till the gum is 

 dissolved. It is then taken out, and worked and pulled with the hands till it has 

 become quite stringy, when it is mixed with lime made of burnt mussel shells, 

 pounded in a hollow stone — which is always kept for the purpose — and kneaded 

 into a tough paste. This cement is indispensable to the natives in making their 

 tools, spears, and water buckets. The stone axe is so valuable and scarce that it 

 is generally the property of the chief of the tribe. He lends it, however, for a 

 consideration, to the best climbers, who use it to cut steps in the bark of trees, to 

 enable them to climb in search of bears, opossums, birds, and nests, and also to 

 cut wood and to strip bark for their dwellings. For the latter purpose the butt 

 end of the handle of the axe is made wedge-shaped, to push under the sheets of 

 bark and prize them off the trees. 



Another stone tool, like a chisel without a handle, is u,sed in forming weapons 

 and wooden vessels. With splinters of flint and volcanic glass the surface of 

 wooden articles is scraped and smoothed, and every man carries a piece of hard, 

 porous lava, as a rasp, to grind the points of spears and poles. These stone 

 implements, although well known to the middle-aged aborigines of the present 

 day, are, in consequence of the introduction of iron, not now in use or to be met 

 with, excepting about old aboriginal camping places. 



The writer lately found, in a ploughed field, two stones, which he showed to 

 one of the oldest and most intelligent men of the Colac tribe. One of them is an 



