“Why, how does he do it?”
“He cuts notches in the trunk of the tree where he can place his feet, and he goes on cutting notch after notch as he ascends, making a broad spiral around the tree until he reaches the limbs. Sometimes he passes a piece of rope, made out of twisted bark, around the body of the tree to steady himself, but he is just as likely to take no rope along, and trust entirely to keeping his balance with his feet in the notches.”
“Those black fellows are very accomplished in their way,” remarked one of the youths.
“They are, indeed,” was the reply; “and they do certain things that no white man can ever do. For example, a black fellow employed on a cattle estate will ride at full gallop and follow the track of a runaway cow or steer without making a single mistake. A white man would be obliged to go at a walk, or a very little better, and quite frequently would find it necessary to dismount and examine the ground carefully. The black fellows are fully equal to your American Indians in following a trail; they can track men almost as well as bloodhounds can. In parts of Australia we have a police force of blacks, and they perform splendid service in hunting highwaymen and others who have committed crimes and fled into the bush for concealment and safety.”
Harry asked if the blacks were honest in their dealings with white people.
“I regret to say that their reputation is not by any means the best in the world,” was the reply. “Like savages everywhere when brought into contact with civilization, they seem to adopt its vices and reject its virtues. They are generally faithful to those by whom they are employed, and in this respect their characters are commendable. When it comes to ordinary lying and stealing, they are very skillful. They resemble other savages in their fondness for intoxicating drinks, and when they get a little money their desire to go on a spree is very apt to be uncontrollable. They will leave their work and go to the nearest place where intoxicants can be bought, and they keep on buying and drinking until their money is gone. Generally speaking, you cannot keep them in your employ very long. As soon as one learns his business so that he is really useful, he either quits or behaves in such a manner that he has to be sent away.”
Just as this last remark was made, the train halted at a station, and as our young friends looked through the window they saw a group of blacks. They had seen a few black fellows on the wheat farm that they visited, and some had come under their observation in the streets of Adelaide. These, however, were dressed in civilized garments, and the group at the station was the first they had seen in aboriginal dress.
Harry noted the scantiness of their costume, which consisted chiefly of a strip of cloth about the waist, and another strip thrown over the shoulder or disposed of in some fantastic way. Their skins were black, though not of the inky, coal-like color of the pure-blooded African negro. Their hair was curly, but did not have a woolly crispness. The features seemed to be more like those of the Malay than of the Negro race, and Ned observed that the hair of the women hung down in wavy plaits, which is not the case with the hair of the negro of the Congo or the Nile. Every man in the party carried a spear, and Ned wondered why they were not armed with bows and arrows.
“That is for the very simple reason,” said their informant, “that the Australian aborigines have never used the bow and arrow; their only weapons are the spear, club, knife, and boomerang. Their principal weapon for fighting is the waddy or club, and each tribe has a peculiar shape for its waddies. This weapon is made of hard wood, and is somewhat suggestive of the night stick of a New York policeman, with the difference that it has a knob on the end to enable it to be grasped with greater security. There is a rule in fighting with the waddy, that you must hit your antagonist on the head. It is not fair to strike him in any other part of the body with these weapons, and the man who would do so would not be regarded as a gentleman in aboriginal society. The difference in the waddies is such that you can very often tell what tribe a party belongs to by examining one of their clubs.
“They are accustomed to spears from their childhood, and can throw them very accurately for a distance of thirty or forty yards. I once saw a considerable number of blacks together, and several white men of us got up a competition in spear throwing. We chalked out the figure of a man on the side of a building, and then paced off forty yards from it. We offered a prize of one shilling to every black who would hit this figure with the spear three times out of five at the distance indicated. We had them take turns in succession, and when the competition was over we found that we were obliged to give a shilling to every one of the competitors, as all had hit it three times. Half of them did so four times, and the other half the entire five times.”