The hieleman or shield, is a piece of wood about two and a half feet long, tapering to the ends with a bevelled face not more than four inches wide at the broadest part, behind which the left hand passes through a hole perfectly guarded. With this narrow buckler the native will parry any missile less swift than the bullet. In throwing the spear after affixing the wammera, the owner poises it, and gently shakes the weapon so as to give it a quivering motion which it retains during its flight. Within fifty or sixty paces the kangaroo must, I should conceive, have a poor chance of his life. [Illustration: Hurling the Spear.] The spear is immeasurably the most dangerous weapon of the Australian savage. Many a white man has owed his death to the spear; many thousands of sheep, cattle, and horses have fallen by it. Several distinguished Englishmen have been severely wounded by spear casts; among whom I may name Captain Bligh, the first governor of New South Wales, Sir George Grey, and Captain Fitzgerald, the present governors of New Zealand and Western Australia, and Captain Stokes, R.N., long employed on the survey of the Australian coasts. The attack by the blacks upon the Lieut.-Governor of Swan River, occurred so lately as December 1848. In self-defence he was compelled to shoot his ferocious assailants just too late to save himself, being seriously hurt by a spear passing through his thigh. Our artist, Mr. Harden S. Melville, while attached to the Australian exploring expedition, in H.M.S. “Fly,” had a narrow escape from making a disagreeably close acquaintance with one of these formidable barbed war tools. The ship’s boat had put ashore at a spot where there was a congregation of native huts, though not a solitary human inhabitant could be distinguished. With a spirit, however, which evinced more devotion to the cause of science than to the usages of polite society, our friend must needs penetrate to the interior of one of the kennel-like abodes, though to effect this purpose he had to crawl on all fours. Whether he found anything to repay him for his pains I don’t recollect; I only know that he had barely scrambled to the perpendicular, with his back to the bush, when the seaman who was with him, with laudable promptitude, called his attention to an interesting object in the distance. It was a native--the owner of the house Mr. Melville had so unceremoniously ransacked, no doubt--and there he stood with his spear nicely adjusted to the wammera and all a-tremble for a cast. The instant, however, that our artist (who I may tell the reader is a perfect giant) turned his face instead of his back to the native, the spear was lowered and the danger at an end. [Illustration: Australian Duel.]