ant
may be behind a thicket which separates the two, and thus the weapon is
literally like the Irishman's gun—one which will shoot round a corner.
The weapon no doubt originated in kangaroo hunting, it being necessary
that the animal should not see his assailant. He is nevertheless struck
down with unerring certainty, even though a copse intervene; the
boomc-ranir comes round the corner and breaks his legs.
The
waddie is also fortnidable, from its size and weight. This, like
Manton's pistols, is the weapon of honour,—for the black fellow of New
South Wales, like his brother savage of the Guards or the line, has his
own peculiar notions of demanding satisfaction. The combatants being
placed, the party challenged holds down his head, so as to present the
top portion of it to his challenger ; when down comes the waddie, with
a blow which would crush in the skull of an ox, but has very little
effect on that of the person struck, from the extraordinary thickness
of his cranium. The challenger now holds down his own block in return,
and receives the same compliment, and so on alternately, till one has
his head really broken, or has had enough ; when honour is pronounced
by the bystanders to be satisfied. English gentlemen, whose seconds
take care that they fight with leadlcss pistols, might adopt the method
of the Australian savage with manifest advantage. There is, at any
rate, fun in it for the lookers on, and some trifle of danger, but it
is much to be doubted whether mock English honour v/ould endanger its
skull by the application of the honest waddie of the savage, which
would speedily solve the question as to whether the combatants of
civilization had or had not any brains.
Polygamy
is practised among the savages of Australia, and the method employed in
obtaining a wife would hardly be approved of by the sylph of the
drawing-room at home. When the ardent lover has made choice of his
future spouse—generally a young woman of another tribe—he steals into
their encampment at night, and having applied the waddie in the
before-mentioned manner to the poor girl's head till she is perfectly
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