14 AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



DOMESTIC FUENITUEE. 



EvEEY woman carries on her back, outside her rug, a basket made of a tough 

 kind of rush, occasionally ornamented with stitches of various kinds. They also 

 carry in the same way a bag formed of the tough inner bark of the acacia tree. 

 Failing to procure this bark, which is the best for the purpose, they use the inner 

 bark of the messmate or of the stringy-bark tree. This is spun into cord and 

 knitted with the fingers into the required shape. The capacity of these articles 

 is from two to three gallons each, and in them are carried food, sticks and tinder 

 for producing fire, gum for cement, shells, tools, charms, &c. 



The women also make a rougher kind of basket out of the common rush, 

 which is ased for cooking food in the ovens. 



Domestic utensils are limited in number ; and, as the art of boiling food is 

 not understood, the natives have no pottery or materials capable of resisting fire. 

 Their cookery is consequently confined chiefly to roasting on embers or baking in 

 holes in the ground ; but as they consume great quantities of gum and manna 

 dissolved together in hot water, a wooden vessel for that purpose is formed of the 

 excrescence of a tree, which is hollowed out sufiiciently large to contain a gallon 

 or two of water. This vessel is placed near enough to the fire to dissolve the 

 contents, but not to bum the wood. It is caUed ' yuuruum,' and must be 

 valuable, from the difiiculty of procuring a suitable knob of wood, and from the 

 great labom- of digging it hollow with a chisel made of the thigh bone of a 

 kangaroo. 



Another vessel, named ' popasjer yuu,' is used for carrying water, and is formed 

 of a sheet of fresh acacia bark, about twenty inches long by twelve broad, bent 

 double and sewed up at each side with kangaroo tail sinews, and the seams made 

 water-tight with an excellent cement, composed of wattle gum and wood ashes, 

 mixed in hot water. After the bucket is made it is hung up to dry, and the 

 contraction of the inner bark causes the vessel to assume a circular shape, which 

 it retains ever after. It is carried by means of a b.and of twisted wattle bark 

 fi^ed across its mouth. 



