Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2Grey, George
History
Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2
Grey, George
Natural history -- Australia -- Western Australia; Western Australia -- Discovery and exploration
The contents of a native woman's bag are: A flat stone to pound roots
with; earth to mix with the pounded roots; quartz, for the purpose of
making spears and knives; stones for hatchets; prepared cakes of gum, to
make and mend weapons and implements; kangaroo sinews to make spears and
to sew with; needles made of the shin-bones of kangaroos, with which they
sew their cloaks, bags, etc.; opossum hair to be spun into waist belts;
shavings of kangaroo skins to polish spears, etc.; the shell of a species
of mussel to cut hair, etc., with; native knives; a native hatchet;
pipe-clay; red ochre, or burnt clay; yellow ochre, a piece of paperbark
to carry water in; waistbands and spare ornaments; pieces of quartz which
the native doctors have extracted from their patients, and thus cured
them from diseases; these they preserve as carefully as Europeans do
relics. Banksia cones (small ones) or pieces of a dry white species of
fungus to kindle fire with rapidly and to convey it from place to place;
grease, if they can procure it from a whale, or from any other source;
the spare weapons of their husbands, or the pieces of wood from which
these are to be manufactured; the roots, etc., which they have collected
during the day. Skins not yet prepared for cloaks are generally carried
between the bag and the back, so as to form a sort of cushion for the bag
to rest on.
In general each woman carries a lighted fire-stick, or brand, under her
cloak and in her hand.
DIFFERENT METHODS OF CATCHING KANGAROOS.
Imagining several parties of this kind, headed by one of the young men,
to be moving through the woods, let us follow them and watch their mode
of procuring and cooking their different varieties of food.
MANNER OF HUNTING A KANGAROO SINGLY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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