and the net, woven by the women, is the only approximation to ingenuity.
Their
cutting implements are of stone, stuck in a cleft stick; their weapons,
the spear, upon which they lavish great pains, boomerang, waddie, or
club, a small stone tomahawk, and a bark shield. The spear is a light
straight stick, as thick as a man's finger, and about ten feet long. It
is either sharpened by fire or barbed with sharks' teeth, and is a
formidable weapon in their hands, the aim being unerring at fifty
yards. It is thrown by the woomera or throwing stick, a piece of wood
two or three feet in length, three inches broad at one end, and going
off to a point at the other, which has a small hook. This is inserted
in a hole in the spear, and has the effect of a sling, enabling the
thrower to send his weapon a hundred yards, and woe be to the stockman
who encounters it at half that distance.
The
boomerang is a puzzle, and even mathematicians cannot comprehend the
law of its action. It is a piece of curved, hard wood, in the form
nearly of a parabola; it is from thirty to forty inches long, about
three inches broad, pointed at both ends, the concave part a quarter of
an inch thick, and the convex edge quite sharp. The mode of using it
is as singular as is the weapon. Ask a black to throw it so that it may
fall at his feet, and away goes the boomerang for forty yards before
him, skimming along the surface at three or four feet from the ground,
when it will suddenly rise into the air for fifty or sixty feet,
describing a curve, and finally drop at the feet of the thrower. During
its course it revolves with great rapidity, as on a pivot, with a
whizzing sound. That so barbarous a people should have invented a
weapon of this description, which civilization never contemplated nor
can explain, is a wonder, setting the laws of projection at defiance.
In the hands of a European, even, it is as dangerous to the thrower as
to the object aimed at, for it may return and strike himself, whilst,
in the hands of the native, it is a most formidable weapon, which
strikes without giving the slightest idea where the blow comes from;
his assail-
