All their food is cooked before being eaten, generally on stones made red-hot. It is wrapped in green leaves, and then covered over with hot ashes to steam. In the north they eat the alligator when they can manage to kill one, and the small fresh-water crocodile, found in most of the Gulf rivers, is also an article of food.

Seeds of various grasses are ground into a paste with water and poured into the ashes to cook, while some fruits and nuts require great preparation before using, as they are extremely poisonous without such treatment. In preserving game, the blacks are very cruel, they twist the legs out of joint to prevent them getting away, and keep them alive in this way until they are wanted for cooking.

They eat the dingo, and everything else that lives; and are very clever at discovering the nests of the native bees; honey, or “sugar-bag,” as they call it, is a favourite food of theirs. It is only by constant moving about from camp to camp that a supply of food can be kept up, the women doing their share of providing by digging up yams and roots, fishing for crayfish and mussels, and grinding seeds between two stones. Their life is a constant worry for food from day to day, and nothing passes them that can be eaten. A favourite food of theirs is the tuber of the water-lily growing in lagoons, of this they even eat the stalks or stems of the seed stalk.

The dugong, a large marine grass-feeding mammal is netted and speared; the flesh, when dried, is similar to bacon, and in the Wide Bay dialect is called “Koggar,” the same name they give to the pig. White ants are esteemed a treat, and their nests are broken into, and the young ones, with the eggs winnowed from the dirt are eaten raw, as well as the grubs, which are the larva; of some locusts or beetles, and which are cut out of the trees.

THE CLASS SYSTEM.

All natives acknowledge the same system of class divisions, and these correspond all over Australia. The blacks are born into these divisions, and the idea is instilled into them from the beginning that they are to observe them as sacred.

Though differing in name or in totem, the classes and divisions prevail everywhere, and a blackfellow knows at once which of the divisions corresponds to his own in a distant tribe.

All things in Nature are divided into the same classes, and are said to be male and female; the sun, moon, and stars are believed to be men and women, and to belong to classes similar to the blacks themselves.

The following is an instance of the system of class divisions belonging to a tribe on the Upper Flinders River, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, calling themselves “Yerrunthully.” They had four class divisions, namely:—

Male marries Female. Children are
Bunbury...Woonco...Coobaroo
Coobaroo...Koorgielah ...Bunbury
Koorgielah ...Coobaroo...Woonco
Woonco...Bunbury...Koorgielah