138 
SURVEY OF THE INTERTROPICAL 
probable that they are not much accustomed 
Dec* 31. even to swimming. Captain Flinders is mis- 
taken in stating that the natives of this place do 
not use the throwing-stick; but it is probable 
they did not produce those instruments to him, 
for fear of being deprived of them, for it required 
much persuasion on our part to prevail upon them 
to let us have any; they were much more im 
geniously formed than others that we had previ- 
ously seen, and different also, in having a small 
sharp-edged shell, or piece of quartz, fixed in a 
gummy knob at the handle, for the purpose of 
scraping the points of the spears: the shaft is 
broad, smooth and flat. Some of these throwing- 
sticks, or mearas,'" were three inches broad and 
two feet six inches long. The following is a re- 
presentation of this instrument I—' 
The spears are very slender, and are made 
from a species of leptospermum that grows abun- 
dantly in swampy places ; they are from nine 
to ten feet long, and barbed with a piece of 
hard wood, fastened on by a ligature of bark 
gummed over; we saw none that were not 
barbed, or had not a hole at the end to receive 
