My new master (I should have called him father, for he behaved to me as kindly as he did to his sons,) gave me a canoe, about sixty feet long, which he purchased at New Guinea, (the island that forms one side of the straits, Australasia being the other,) for a large tomahawk and a bow and arrow. He also gave me a piece of ground, on which he taught me to grow yams, bananas, and cocoa-nuts. When we were not otherwise engaged, he taught me to shoot with the bow and arrow, and to spear fish.
Little William soon began to speak their language; and I also learned so much of it as to be able to converse in it with great ease; having no other than natives to speak to, it is more than probable that as I learned their language, I should have forgotten that of my native country.
Although William was in general more cheerful, he would now and then appear very uneasy. On these occasions, I used to ask Dupper to allow me to sleep along with the child. This made him much more happy. As soon as he could speak their language pretty freely, he would go down to the beach with the other children of the island; and the effect of the sun on his skin became very apparent. In a few months he could not be distinguished by his color from the other children; his hair being the only thing by which he could be known at a distance, from its light color.
The kind Murray Islander teaching John Ireland the use of the Bow and Arrow.
See page [36].
Murray’s Island is about two miles across, and contains about seven or eight hundred people. During my stay there, I never perceived any person who was in any manner above the rest of the natives, as regarded being a king, or chief, or any thing of that kind; but the whole of the inhabitants seem entirely independent of each other.
The houses or huts of the natives are something in the form of a bee-hive, with a hole in the side, even with the ground, and about two feet and a half in height, which serves for an entrance. When you go in, you must creep upon your hands and knees. They are made by placing a pole upright in the ground, and putting stakes round it in a circle at equal distances: these are then all bent inwards, and fastened together near the top of the pole, to which they are firmly bound.
The outside is then covered with dried banana leaves, which are very large. The entrance is merely a place in the side left uncovered. The pole, or supporter, is generally ornamented with shells; and at the top of it, which sticks out above the rest of the hut, they mostly fasten the largest one they can find. Some of the huts have a quantity of skulls arranged round the inside.
Their canoes, or boats, are very large, mostly about fifty or sixty feet long, and some even larger than that. Two masts, opposite to each other, with a sail hanging between them, are placed nearly in the centre, but more towards the head of the canoe. The sail is made of plaited grass. When going with a side wind, they put one of the masts backwards, so that the sail stands slantingly. They use paddles of almost every shape; but the most general is merely a piece of wood cut flat, and broadest at the end which touches the water.
They are expert in the use of the bow, which they call sireck; they make them of split bamboo; and they are so powerful that persons not accustomed to using the bow, would scarcely be able to bend them. Their arrows are pieces of wood made heavy at one end by a piece of stone or shell, sharpened at the end.