To kill. The palms of the hands are placed together and moved as if striking an object.
Emu. Bends the fingers of one hand at right angles to palm and sways the arm to and fro.
Sleeping. He lays his head upon the palm of a hand.
Sitting. He points to the ground.
Running. His legs are moved in a running fashion.
Hungry. He draws in his abdomen and shows his ribs.
An intricate system of sign language is carried on by movements of the hands and fingers when the natives are at close enough range for the signals to be visible. The following are a few of the more common signs used every day by the Arunndta tribe:
To call the attention of a person, a man holds his open hand in front of his face, with the palm towards him, and drops it again. The sign having been acknowledged, a mutual exchange of gesture correspondence is indulged in, by means of which an almost inexhaustible number of ideas can be communicated in the form of coherent “speech.” The following few signs (most of which are sketched on [page 391, Fig. 57]) may be taken as typical of a vocabulary which in its entirety is both elaborate and intricate:
Fig. 57. Sign-language of Arunndta tribe.