VI.—THE TRACKING INSTINCT IN AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.
The strange, almost superhuman, powers of the Australian blacks in following blind, invisible tracks have been turned to good account in the detection of crime. Their senses of sight, smell, and touch are abnormally acute. They can distinguish the trail of lost animals one from the other, and follow it for hundreds of miles. Like the Red Indians of North America, they judge by a leaf, a blade of grass, a mere splash in the mud; they can tell with unfailing precision whether the ground has been recently disturbed, and even what has passed over it.
A remarkable instance occurred in the colony of Victoria in 1851, when a stockholder, travelling up to Melbourne with a considerable sum of money, disappeared. His horse had returned riderless to the station, and without saddle or bridle. A search was at once instituted, but proved fruitless. The horse’s hoof-marks were followed to the very boundary of the run, near which stood a hut occupied by two shepherds. These men, when questioned, declared that neither man nor horse had passed that way. Then a native who worked on the station was pressed into the service, and starting from the house, walking with downcast eyes and occasionally putting his nose to the ground, he easily followed the horse’s track to the shepherds’ hut, where he at once offered some information. “Two white mans walk here,” he said, pointing to indications he alone could discover on the ground. A few yards farther he cried, “Here fight! here large fight!” and it was seen that the grass had been trampled down. Again, close at hand, he shouted in great excitement, “Here kill—kill!” A minute examination of the spot showed that the earth had been moved recently, and on turning it over a quantity of clotted blood was found below.
There was nothing, however, definitely to prove foul play, and further search was necessary. The black now discovered the tracks of men by the banks of a small stream hard by, which formed the boundary of the run. The stream was shrunk to a tiny thread after the long drought, and here and there was swallowed up by sand. But it gathered occasionally into deep, stagnant pools, which marked its course. Each of these the native examined, still finding foot-marks on the margin. At last the party reached a pond larger than any, wide, and seemingly very deep. The tracker, after circling round and round the bank, said the trail had ceased, and bent all his attention upon the surface of the water, where a quantity of dark scum was floating. Some of this he skimmed off, tasted and smelt it, and decided positively—“White man here.”
The pond was soon dragged with grappling-irons and long spears, and presently a large sack was brought up, which was found to contain the mangled remains of the missing stockholder. The sack had been weighted with many stones to prevent it from rising to the surface.
Suspicion fell upon the two shepherds who lived in the hut on the boundary of the run. One was a convict on ticket-of-leave, the other a deserter from a regiment in England. Both had taken part in the search, and both had appeared much agitated and upset as the black’s marvellous discoveries were laid bare. Both, too, incautiously urged that the search had gone far enough, and protested against examining the ponds. While this was being done, and unobserved by them, a magistrate and two constables went to their hut and searched it thoroughly. They first sent away an old woman who acted as the shepherds’ servant, and then turned over the place. Nothing was found in the hut, but in an outhouse they came upon a coat and waistcoat and two pairs of trousers, all much stained with fresh blood-marks. On this the shepherds were arrested and sent down to Melbourne.
What had become of the saddle-bags in which the murdered man had carried his cash? It was surmised that they had been put by in some safe place, and again the services of the native tracker were sought. He now made a start from the shepherds’ hut, and discovered as before, by sight and smell, the tracks of two men’s feet, travelling northward. These took him to a gully or dry watercourse, in the centre of which was a high pile of stones. The tracks ended at a stone on the side, where the native said he smelt leather. When several stones had been taken down, the saddle-bags, saddle, and bridle were found hidden in an inner receptacle. The money, the motive of the murder, was still in the bags—no less than £2,000—and had been left there, no doubt, for removal at a more convenient time.
The shepherds were put on their trial, and the evidence thus accumulated was deemed convincing by a jury. It was also proved that the blood-stained clothes had been worn by the prisoners both on the day before and on the very day of the murder. The stains were ascertained by chemical analysis to be of human blood, not of sheep’s, as set up by the defence. It was also shown that the men had been absent from the hut the greater part of the morning of the murder. They were executed at Melbourne.
This extraordinary faculty of following a trail is characteristic of all the Australian blacks. It was remarkably illustrated in a Queensland case, where a man was missing who was supposed to have been murdered, and whose remains were discovered by the black trackers. An aged shepherd, who had long served on a certain station, was at last sent off with a considerable sum, arrears of pay. He started down country, but was never heard of again. Various suspicious reports started a belief that he had been the victim of foul play. The police were called in, and proceeded to make a thorough search, assisted by several blacks, who usually hang about the station loafing. But they lost their native indolence when there was tracking to be done. Now they were roused to keenest excitement, and entered eagerly into the work, jabbering and gesticulating, with flashing eyes. No one, to look at these eyes, generally dull and bleary, could imagine that they possessed such visual powers, or that their owners were so shrewdly observant.
The search commenced at the hut lately occupied by the shepherd. The first thing discovered, lying among the ashes of the hearth, was a spade, which might have been used as a weapon of offence; spots on it, as the blacks declared, were of blood. Some similar spots were pointed out upon the hard, well-trodden ground outside, and the track led to a creek or water-hole, on the banks of which the blacks picked up among the tufts of short dried grass several locks of reddish-white hair, invisible to everyone else. The depths of the water were now probed with long poles, and the blacks presently fished up a blucher boot with an iron heel. The hair and the boot were both believed to belong to the missing shepherd. The trackers still found locks of hair, following them to a second water-hole, where all traces ceased, and it was supposed by some that the body lay there at the bottom. Not so the blacks, who asserted that it had now been lifted upon horseback for removal to a more distant spot, and in proof pointed out hoof-marks, which had escaped observation until they detected them. The hoof-marks were large and small, obviously of a mare and her foal. Yet the water-hole was searched thoroughly; the blacks stripped and dived, they smelt and tasted the water, but always shook their heads, and, as a matter of fact, nothing was found in this second creek. The pursuit returned to the hoof-marks, and these were followed to the edge of a scrub, where for the time they were lost.
Next day, however, they were again picked up, on the hard, bare ground, where there was hardly a blade of grass. They led to the far-off edge of a plain, towards a small spiral column which ascended into the sky. It was the remains of an old and dilapidated sheep-yard, which had been burnt by the station overseer. This man, it should have been premised, had all along been suspected of making away with the shepherd from interested motives, having been the depositary of his savings. And it was remembered that he had paid several visits in the last few days to the burning sheep-yard. Now, when the search party reached the spot, where little but charred and smouldering embers remained, the blacks eagerly turned over the ashes. Suddenly a woman, a black “gin,” screamed shrilly, and cried, “Bones sit down here,” and closer examination disclosed a heap of calcined human remains. Small portions of the skull were still unconsumed, and a few teeth were found, quite perfect, having altogether escaped the action of the fire. Soon the buckle of a belt was discovered, and identified as having been worn by the missing shepherd, and also the iron heel of a boot corresponding to that found in the first water-hole. Thus the marvellous sagacity of the black trackers had solved the mystery of the shepherd’s disappearance; but, although the shepherd’s fate was thereby established beyond doubt, the evidence was not sufficient to bring home the crime of murder to the overseer.