straight as their own spears, many of them nearly as thin, but all surprisingly active. Like most blacks, they were well chested and shouldered, but disproportionately slight below the knee."[1]
In the narrative of their overland expedition from Rockhampton to Cape York, Northern Queensland (1867), the Messrs. Jardine state that at a corrobboree held near Newcastle Bay they observed that the natives used two large drums, named Waropa, or Burra-burra. These drums are obtained by barter or by war from the islanders of Torres Straits, who frequently visit the continent. "The drum," adds the Messrs. Jardine, "is neatly made of a solid piece of wood, scooped out, in shape like an elongated dice-box. One end is covered with the skin of a snake or iguana, the other being left open. When this instrument is played upon by a muscular and excited 'nigger,' a music results which seems to please him according to its intensity. Keeping time with these, and aiding with their voices, they keep up their wild dance, varying the chant with the peculiar b-r-r-r-r-r-r-o-o of the Australian savage (a sound made by blubbering his thick lips over his closed teeth), and giving to their outstretched knees the nervous tremor peculiar to the corrobboree."[2]
I had one of these drums in my possession. It was obtained in New Guinea. It was made from a solid piece of very dark—nearly black—wood, and rather richly ornamented with carved figures and lines. It had been scooped out so as to leave only a thin shell. The part covered by skin was round, and the other end rudely carved in the form of the head of a reptile—perhaps an iguana. It was a beautiful specimen of native art. The natives of Australia, when in their natural state, are, as a rule, slow to avail themselves of new inventions, but the inhabitants of Cape York are indebted to the people of New Guinea for more important works of art than the Waropa; and, taught by experience, seem to adopt foreign customs with a facility not generally observed elsewhere. Anything originating with their own people is welcomed by the natives everywhere, but that which is foreign is usually regarded with distrust.
The dances of the females are referred to in another part of this work.
The dances described in the Rev. J. G. Wood's work are only variations of the corrobboree, but they are very interesting. In the Palti and other dances it is said that the natives use red paint as well as white in decorating their persons; and in the Pedeku dance of the Moorundi natives they paint their bodies with stripes of red-ochre only.
In the canoe-dance the bodies are painted with white and red ochre, and sticks are used to represent the paddles. The men station themselves in two lines, each with a stick across his back, which is held by the arms, and they move their feet alternately to the tune of the song composed for the ceremony. At a given signal they all bring their sticks to the front, and hold them as they
- ↑ Our Antipodes, by Lieut.-Col. Mundy, pp. 45-6.
- ↑ Macgillivray gives a figure of the drum used by the people of the village of Tassai. It is a hollow cylinder of palm-wood, two feet and a half iu length and four inches iu diameter. One end is covered over with the skin of a large lizard.—Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, 1852, vol. I., p. 260.
