The “Shield Game” is another pastime of the grown-up natives. In this each man is provided with a strong shield made of palm-leaf stalks. Armed with this he faces his opponent. After much preliminary stamping and feigning they close and a mighty struggle commences, in which each man endeavours to push his adversary back. It is a kind of tug-of-war reversed. Besides being a game, it is often used as a means to settle disputes, in which, of course, the strongest man wins. The accompanying photograph gives an excellent idea of the pastime. Occasionally when tribes fall out a whole line of experts are chosen from each side, and the dispute is settled without bloodshed by the success of either side. It will be gleaned from this that the quality of “pushfulness” has an added value in British Guiana. To go back to the games of children and also to jump a few thousand miles to the west, we find some interesting and curious pastimes among the aboriginals of Australia, where the young idea copies the ways of its fathers and makes games of their serious ceremonies. Amongst other things they play at marriage, taking some of the romantic details prior to the ceremony to make their game. In some parts of Australia an aboriginal has first to catch his wife before he can marry her, and the youngsters have probably heard from their mothers that this was not always the easiest thing to do, for there may have been others anxious to wed her--provided always that she was a good worker, looks being of small account. So the children have taken all these things into consideration and made their game from them. As these aborigines have no proper villages, but live in shelters thrown together in the most primitive fashion, the children choose a spot in the bush where Nature has made a sort of covering; they then congregate and imitate grown-up people, chattering about nothing in particular, whilst the young man hovers round in the bush. Suddenly he bears down on the players and attempts to abduct one of the girls. This arouses the others, who all try to stop him, and one of the young gallants attacks the would-be abductor and a mock fight ensues, the winner bearing the maiden off in triumph to the bush. [Illustration: AN AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL CORROBOREE _From a Photo. by permission of the Queensland Government._]