Their clubs are made of a hard black wood; the handle is made small, and has a knob at the end to prevent its slipping out of the hand.
They are very fond of all sorts of European articles; especially beads, glass, red cloth, bottles, and particularly of iron, which they call ‘torre.’ When they see a ship, they say directly, “We will get some torre.” They think iron is found in the white men’s country in large rocks; and that we merely have to break pieces off as we want them.
Of all things, they were most inquisitive about fire-arms, which they call by the same name as they do their bows. Dupper told me that some of their people had been killed by them, and they never could see what struck them. But I could not explain to him the way that a gun was made, for I scarcely knew myself; all I could tell him I did, but this only made him the more curious.
Their usual way of catching fish is by spearing; but they also take the small ones with a kind of net, something like a sieve. One party disturbs the water, by beating it with long bamboo sticks, and so drive the fish towards the other, who then spear or net them. Lobsters are caught in the following manner: a party will get on a sandbank at night, some of them holding a bunch of lighted cocoa-nut leaves above their heads; the lobsters, seeing the light, leave their holes, and are then speared by the others.
Turtles abound on the islands, and are caught by the natives very dexterously. When they see them asleep on the water, a party of seven or eight go in a canoe, four of the party paddling very slowly and silently towards them, the others squatting on the fore part of the canoe, with a rope fastened to their arms, and only their heads above the side of the canoe. Upon getting near enough, the parties in the canoe suddenly leap out, and catch the turtle by the fins; by which they are then hauled into the boat. I have seen three caught at one time in this manner.
After I had resided some months on this island, a native died in one of the huts near Dupper’s. Upon his telling me of the event, he said he was certain something very dreadful would happen soon. This remark of Dupper’s startled me; for it was the first death I had known on the island, and I could not help thinking of the fate of the crew of the Charles Eaton. An idea once or twice entered my mind that harm was intended to me on account of the death of this man; but Dupper treated me just the same as usual. Soon after sunset I went to rest, still feeling very uneasy. I had not lain very long, when I heard a noise, as of a person rattling shells, and breathing very hard.
Dupper uttered a short sentence in a language which I did not understand, and quite different from that of Murray’s Island, and then himself and all that were in the hut, hid their faces in the sand. I asked Dupper what the noise was; he told me, the spirit of the dead man.
John Ireland sees the extraordinary apparitions which cause such superstitious terrors among the Murray Islanders.
See page [45].
The next day, I and some of the natives, with little William, were sitting under a bamboo fence, close to the huts, when I heard the same noise a short distance off. On looking among the bushes, I saw two figures, the one red and the other white, with what appeared to be a fan over each of their heads. They began throwing stones at us; and the natives, who were about twenty in number, instead of getting up and driving them away, sat still, and seemed to be totally unnerved. The figures were very short, not larger than children fourteen years of age. I was told that they were the spirits of their departed friends.