446 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Deo. 26, 1889. 



THE BLACK TRACKERS OF AUSTRALIA. 



IT is commonly stated that the natives of Australia are 

 the lowest type of savages, but the assertion is far 

 too sweeping to be accurate. There are many tribes of 

 natives in Australia, differing widely from one another. 

 Borne of them, doubtless, are very degraded; but others 

 display a great deal of intelligence and have institutions 

 and customs, whicb seem to be the survival of a highly 

 complicated order of society. Others, again, though 

 savages, are very fine savages. That is to say, that as- 

 suming ' they are to live as wild men, they possess in a 

 high degree the qualities that are required for mating 

 the best of their conditions. Palgrave, the celebrated 

 oriental traveler, and the best narrator of travels, per- 

 haps, that ever lived, declares that the lowest type of 

 humanity he ever met or heard of, is to be found among 

 some of the wandering tribes in the Arabian desert. These 

 miserable wretches, he says, have not sense enough to 

 get a sufficiency of food where it might be got, but eat 

 the seeds of a kind of grass, and when that fails them, 

 are reduced to starvation, which they suffer with con- 

 tentment out of sheer stupidity. When he came among 

 them with his servant and camels, in the course of his 

 journey to Central Arabia, they showed no interest in 

 him or his belongings, though he was well provided 

 with all sorts of good things; and, as far as he could 

 make out, they had no ideas on any subject, not even the 

 instinct of a grazing animal, which leads it where the 

 beat pasture is to be found. 



Now, the worst of the Australian aborigines are noth- 

 ing like as bad as that. Even in the most barren parts 

 of the continent, where it seems wonderful that any life 

 can exist, the natives contrive to get on fairly well. 

 They cannot afford to be fastidious. In fact, they eat 

 everything that is eatable, including some things which 

 to civilized folks would seem perfectly uneatable. For 

 example, they devour ants and seem to enjoy them im- 

 mensely. There are several kinds of ants in Australia, 

 some of which are exceedingly venomous, while others 

 are harmless. They make peculiar hills or mounds of 

 earth, in which they swarm in innumerable multitudes. 

 The natives break open these mounds, and filling both 

 hands with ants, stuff their mouths with them, and go on 

 grabbing and stuffing and chewing until there are none 

 left. They even feast on some of the venomous varieties 

 in this way. and do not appear to suffer any ill conse- 

 quences. They also depend largely for their subsistence 

 on reptiles, which can only be caught by the exercise of 

 much ingenuity and by the employ went of faculties 

 more resembling those of animals than of mankind. 

 They hunt them both by sight and smell, and there ap- 

 pears to be no doubt that those two senses have been 

 developed in them to an almost incredible extent by the 

 hereditary instinct for getting food in places where it 

 could not otherwise be got. 



It should be said here that the Australian desert, as it 

 is invariably called by the people there, is not really 

 desert in the sense of being void of all vegetation. It 

 doe3 not at all resemble the Zaaras of northern Africa, 

 those low-lying plains of mere sand which literally pro- 

 duce no green thing except in scattered oases hundreds of 

 miles apart. It is not nearly so inhospitable as the 

 alkali deserts of western America. It always grows salt 

 bush, or mallee, or some sort of stunted plants, often 

 many varieties, and very beautiful and interesting ones, 

 when viewed by the discerning eyes of a naturalist; and 

 among these plants, though the earth is like the floor of 

 a brick kiln, there are to be found live creatures, snakes, 

 iguanas, lizards, "native cats," and sometimes kangaroo 

 rats and other small marsupials, It must not be sup- 

 posed that because an animal is called a native cat, it 

 has anything feline about it. Not at all. The Australians 

 have a habit of calling all sorts of queer beasts, birds and 

 plants "the native this" or "the native that," without the 

 slightest regard to resemblance, even in outward ap- 

 pearance. 



The "native cat" is a marsupial animal, carnivorous 

 and f rugivorous, perhaps omnivorous, about a foot long, 

 with a pointed nose and a long tail, and beautiful soft 

 gray fur spotted with white. It is as great a scourge to 

 the poultry yard as a fox, and it is also one of the most 

 dreaded pests of the vineyard by its penchant for grapes. 

 It is a nocturnal animal, and on moonlight nights in sum- 

 mer it does serious damage by climbing up the low-grow- 

 ing vines and eating or nibbling all the ripest grapes on 

 each bunch. In the desert it lives on the "native cur- 

 rant," a berry which is no more like a currant than the 

 "native cat" is like a cat. It also preys on kangaroo 

 rats and mice, when it can get them. Kangaroo rats 

 and mice are mere diminutive kangaroos, a few inches 

 in height, pretty little creatures, somewhat akin to the 

 jerboas of Egypt and Arabia, but, of course, marsupial. 

 They are found in the most arid parts of Australia, and 

 appear to subsist entirely without water. Iguanas, or, as 

 the men in the brush invariably call them, "go annas," 

 or "go Hannahs," are reptiles like enormous lizards, 

 weird-looking brutes three or four feet long, with a 

 peculiar dry skin hanging in folds upon them as if it had 

 formerly belonged to a much larger animal and been 

 bought second-hand by the iguana or appropriated when 

 cast off by its first owner. The iguana has formidable 

 teeth and bites like a dog. It is also very quick and cun- 

 ning, and is altogether one of the queerest beasts in that 

 queer country. * 



Here, then, are the chief constituents of the blackfel- 

 low's cuisine. It takes a black fellow, however, to find 

 them; for an unsophisticated European might live in 

 those parts for months and not be able to find them. It 

 is very interesting, when a camp in the desert has got 

 bare of food, when the mutton and damper have given 

 out, and there is no prospect of getting any more for 

 many days, to not ice the air of importance of the black- 

 fellow, who is generally to be found at every camp and 

 at every sheep station. Hitherto he has been despised 

 and treated with little more consideration than one of 

 the dogs. The rest of the party have grudged him his 

 share of the scanty stock of " tucker," and toward the 

 end, indeed, he has got little but bones and scraps. Now 

 all is changed. Everybody is very civil to him, and he 

 shows by his looks and manner that he feels himself quite 

 a personage, with weighty responsibilities devolving upon 

 him. He is responsible for nothing lefs than the life of 

 every man -in the camp, for he is the only one among 



them who can get food. In those trackless wastes the 

 oldest and most experienced European bushman is always 

 in danger of being " bushed," that is, lost, if once he 

 goes out of sight of the camp. The scrub is about the 

 height of a man, a little higher, 6 or 7ft., and is so decep- 

 tive in its monotonous variety that the traveler loses 

 himself in next to no time and becomes utterly bewil- 

 dered the moment he tries to find his way back to where 

 he started from. Hundreds of men have walked round 

 in a circle in the scrub till they dropped and died of 

 starvation or thirst without ever having gone a mile from 

 their companions. Not so the natives. No blackfellow 

 ever yet got bushed; and if one were bushed for weeks 

 or months, he could always get a living. 



So when the tucker question arises in the camp in its 

 gravest form, the blackfellow ties round his waist a thing 

 that looks not unlike a woolen comforter, but is in 

 reality a netted bag, made of fibrous bark, three or four 

 feet long and four or five inches wide; and thus lightly 

 attired he bids farewell to society with much grinning 

 and gesticulation and glides noiselessly into the scrub. 

 The next day, or, perhaps, the day after, if lie has had to 

 go far afield, he returns. His netted bag is still tied 

 tightly round his waist, but it is distended to its utmost 

 capacity by "rats and mice and such small deer," while 

 hanging to it by their heads and dangling from it to his 

 heels are perhaps three or four snakes, a couple of "go 

 Hannahs," and a varied assortment of lizards and native 

 cats. Loud congratulations welcome the successful 

 hunter, who is the most popular man in the camp for the 

 time being. The embers of the fire are fanned into a 

 flame with a cabbage tree hat, mallee roots as dry as tin- 

 der are piled on them, a cheerful blaze springs up, and 

 before long there is a nice clear fire for broiling or frying 

 or stewing, Then follows a royal feast, every man eat- 

 ing as much as he can, since meat won't keep in that hot 

 climate, and there is no knowing when he may get any 

 more. Although the animals are numerous and various 

 indeed, there is but little meat on any of them, for they 

 in their turn are half starved. The fleshiest of them all 

 are the snakes and the iguana, which live on insects, and 

 seem always in good condition. Their meat is very 

 white and delicate, with a curious flavor of its own, 

 something like chicken, but distinctly gamy. The meat 

 of the marsupials is not to be distinguished from hare, 

 only there is more on a ten-pound hare than there is on a 

 score of kangaroo rats and native cats. Men living in 

 the open air, who have fasted for two days, however, 

 pick very clean, and there is no waste at a meal like that. 

 If there are any parts which even the strong stomachs of 

 the bushmen reject, the blackfellow is not proud. He 

 eats them all, and is not very particular either as to 

 whether they are cooked or raw. 



Now, how did this untutored savage contrive to catch 

 these wiliest and most agile of all wild animals on their 

 own ground and amid t-urroundings the most favorable 

 to their concealment? He caught them by simply exer- 

 cising the faculties of a superior wild animal. With 

 those wonderful great brown eyes of his he could see the 

 faintest trail where a snake had zigzagged through the 

 dry moss and leaves, or the lightest footmark where an 

 iguana had fled from his approach to its refuge in a hol- 

 low tree. When daylight failed him and the dews of 

 evening began to fall, his broad nostrils took up the chase, 

 and stooping down among the bushes, with a tough 

 forked stick- in his hand to support him in his tiring atti- 

 tude, he followed the track as unerringly as any blood- 

 hound. When he ran a snake to earth, if he could not 

 surprise it in the open and kill it by a sudden blow of his 

 stick, he squatted over its hole, holding the forked end 

 of his stick downward, and made a low hissing or whist- 

 ling sound with his lips. Soon the snake put his head 

 oufof the hole and peered around. In an instant the 

 forked stick descended and fixed it to the ground by the 

 neck, and the blackfellow, seizing it firmly with his 

 muscular hands just behind the head, so that it could 

 not bite him, dragged it out of the hole and twisted its 

 head off; or, if it were too strong for that, pounded it on 

 the ground till its back was broken. So with the iguanas 

 and all the other animals. The blackfellow never lost 

 their trail when once he got upon it, and having followed 

 them to their lair, he patiently waited until they came 

 out or until ho was able to get a hand in and pull them 

 out. 



The blackfellows declare, and I believe with truth, 

 that not a single animal can escape them if they have 

 time to hunt a piece of desert country thoroughly. When 

 they want to return to camp, they can follow their own 

 trail by sight with the greatest ease, but they say they 

 cannot follow their own trail by scent at all. It has no 

 scent for them, though another man's has a strong scent. 

 This is one of the most curious facts connected with these 

 strange people; but it is only in accord with well-known 

 natural phenomena. 



The governments of the several Australian colonies no 

 sooner became aware of the blackfellows' faculty of 

 hunting by sight and scent, than they discerned what 

 valuable auxiliaries they would be to the police. The 

 practice of employing black trackers to detect crime and 

 fugitives from justice dates from the time when New 

 South Wales and Van Piemen's Land were penal settle- 

 ments, and when the convicts frequently made their 

 escape from the stockades and. took to the bush, from 

 which they emerged to become the terror of the high- 

 ways, and often to commit frightful outrages at the set- 

 tlers' homes. There was nothing these miscreants were 

 so much afraid of as the black trackers; and they had 

 reason to be afraid of them, for more bushrangers were 

 brought to the gibbet by their means than by any other. 

 They have been employed ever since and still form a 

 valuable adjunct to the detective force. 



The horrors of the bad days in the colonies are not 

 pleasant to recall. But I may briefly describe how a 

 shocking crime was brought to light and the criminals 

 were brought to justice by the aid of black trackers not 

 many years ago. 



A certain district in the interior of New South Wales 

 had long been notorious for horse-stealing and robberies 

 of various kinds, and several most mysterious crimes had 

 been committed. The police were entirely baffled. It 

 stood to reason that some desperate scoundrels must be 

 at work. But the locality was very sparsely populated, 

 every house was known, and the inhabitants were ac- 

 counted for as respectable settlers, while those jjarts of 

 the district where there were no houses w r ere so ragged 

 and inhospitable that it was not thought possible that the 

 bushrangers could subsist there. Bushrangers as a rule 



are very self-indulgent gentry, like most criminals, and 

 they seldom or never carry on their operations long in 

 any part of the country where they cannot get snug 

 quarters in the houses of relatives or sympathizers among 

 the settlers. Here the authorities, after the most searching- 

 inquiries, could not discover a single dwelling in which a 

 bad character would have a chance of shelter. The whole 

 district was divided into large cattle farms, and though 

 some of the homesteads were buried in the bush in very 

 lonely situations, they were large and comfortable estab- 

 lishments, with a number of people about them, and be- 

 longed in every instance to men of wealth and standing 

 — the very class who were most inimical to the bush- 

 rangers, the horse stealers, and all other descriptions of 

 rapscallions. There was not a single shanty in the neigh- 

 borhood, the large proprietors having bought out, or 

 squeezed out, every "free selector," as the small settlers 

 are called, a class who had never been numerous in that 

 purely pastoral region. Yet the district was grievously 

 infested by bushrangers. Scarcely a month passed with- 

 out some audacious crime being committed, and more 

 than once leading settlers were stopped on the roads by 

 masked men, robbed of all they had about them, and 

 cruelly maltreated. There are degrees of villainy even 

 among bushrangers; and the gang who were at work in 

 this district seemed to belong to that odious class of des- 

 peradoes who committed brutalities for their own sake, 

 One day two boundary riders, who had been going the 

 rounds of the cattle station to which they belonged, re- 

 ported a terrible discovery. In the bush, not far froin a 

 back road leading to the principal town in the district, 

 they had found the remains of a man under circum- 

 stances so revolting to humanity that they might well be 

 deemed incredible. The indications showed beyond a 

 doubt that the unhappy wretch had been placed naked 

 upon an ant hill, fastened by the hands and feet to trees, 

 and left there to be devoured alive by the venomous 

 insects. This was a mode of torture well known to have 

 been inflicted in many instances by the very worst class 

 of bushrangers upon travelers who had shot any of the 

 gang or had refused to accede to their terms of ransom. 

 In this case it was manifest that the atrocious crime had 

 not been committed many days. The skeleton of the 

 victim Was white and dry — for the ants make quick 

 work — but the joints still hung together by the ligaments, 

 and some of the internal parts were not yet destroyed. 



The news of this horrible discovery aroused an intense, 

 feeling of indignation throughout the district. A meet- 

 ing of settlers was held and a sum of $10,000 was sub- 

 scribed toward instituting a vigorous effort to detect the 

 criminals. The authorities at Sydney were communi- 

 cated with, and the police were allowed carte blanche, 

 They at once resolved to secure the services of the most 

 higfily trained blacktrackers to be obtained for money. 

 They came from Port Darwin, in the far north of Aus- 

 tralia, where they had been in the service of the Govern- 

 ment of the Northern Territory. No inkling of this was 

 allowed to get abroad in the afflicted district, but all 

 plans having been secretly laid, a couple of pleasant 

 looking elderly gentlemen, dressed in the garb of new 

 chums from England, rode up one evening to the home- 

 stead of the station where the body had been found, and 

 early the next morning three black cattle drovers arrived 

 at the same place with a mob of steers. The new chums 

 were two of the smartest police officers in Australia and 

 the colored cattle drovers were the black trackers from 

 Port Darwin. The latter were little fellows with enor- 

 mous heads, large, wistful, beautiful eyes, and straight 

 noses with blunt points and wide open nostrils. They wore 

 greasy cabbage tree hats, and the usual ragged breeches 

 and boots costume of the bullock-punching fraternity; 

 but it did not need much observation to see that this was 

 only a disguise in which they were very uneasy. 



On the night of their arrival they went bareheaded 

 and barefooted, clothed only in a light serge jumper and 

 trousers, and carrying a short stick in their hand, to the 

 place where the ghastly skeleton of the murdered man 

 still lay, with its wrists'and ankles fastened to the trees. 

 The police officers had a long consultation with them in 

 their own language, and immediately afterward (he 

 three men began beating the bush just like setter i beat- 

 ing a field for partridges. The attitude was mos' pecu- 

 liar, the body being bent so low that the head was on a 

 level with the hips, if not lower, the back being hnllowed 

 in a very singular manner, and the weight of the fore- 

 part supported by the stick held in the hand. Yet, in 

 this cramped position, as it seemed, the blackfell .ws 

 were able to run at a very rapid pace. They scourt d 

 every inch of ground for hundreds of yards in every di- 

 rection, often going right down on their faces and press- 

 ing their noses to the earth for several minutes at a time. 

 In about half an hour they reported that they had found 

 a trail of two horses going in the direction of the hills, 

 and being put on that, they trotted off at a rate of fully 

 five miles an hour. After' a run of nearly three hours 

 they stopped short, and, closely examining the ground, 

 decided that they had reached the first halting place of 

 the criminals. They showed where the horses had been 

 tethered and where their riders had rested, and they 

 here made the startling assertion that there were three 

 iu the party, of whom one was a woman. The police dis- 

 believed this, but nothing would shake the trackers' 

 opinion. Following the trail on, they found another 

 camping place about twenty miles further toward the 

 bids, and here again they insisted that a woman had 

 been there with two men. What was more, they de- 

 clared that there had been a struggle, and that the track 

 of the horse which had borne the heaviest burden before 

 was lighter on leaving this spot. The police were incre- 

 dulous, and were for pressing on, but the trackers were 

 so positive they were allowed to have their own way. It 

 was now broad daylisht, and they were able to track 

 both by sight and scent. 



They followed a trail of men's feet and other indica- 

 tions in an adjoining thicket, and there found the remains 

 of a woman's body, horribly mutilated and partially 

 charred, an attempt having evidently been made to burn 

 it. 



The pursuit was at once resumed, and on the following 

 day the trackers ran the trail into a stockyard at a home- 

 stead buried in the bush on one of the roughest cattle 

 stations in the district. The police waited until a body of 

 troopers who were following them arrived. They then 

 surrounded the homestead and called on all the inmates 

 to surrender. No answer being given and all the doors 

 being found barred, the police prepared to set the build- 

 ing on fire. Upon that the owner of the station and two 



