furnish details of a kind likely to be useful to their friends. It is not without interest and importance that one of their message-sticks should have been produced in a court of justice in Queensland, and interpreted by a native trooper.
All the wonderful stories told of the Australians in the various works on ethnology, now becoming popular, are finally disposed of by the evidence of competent observers. The natives not only understand a drawing or a picture when they see it, but they themselves are tolerably good artists (probably much better artists than those who have represented them as little superior to monkeys or dogs), and they have invented, and probably have had in use for ages, picture-writing not inferior—indeed, as approaching a symbolical character, superior—to that of the birch-bark letter-writing of the Indians of America. There are, amongst some tribes, conventionalized forms, evidently; and it is of the utmost importance to ascertain to what extent these are used, and by what tribes they are understood. This subject and many others equally interesting were being investigated at the time when the results of my investigations had to be given prematurely to the public.
The information supplied by the Honorable F. Barlee, M.P., the Colonial Secretary in West Australia; Mr. Bartley, of Brisbane in Queensland; the Rev. Mr. Bulmer, of Lake Tyers in Gippsland; and Mr. J. Moore Davis—is conclusive as to the practice of sending messages by the means above described; and this alone must serve to raise the blacks of Australia to a much higher position amongst the races of the world than that hitherto ascribed to them.
The boomerang, the womerah, the weet-weet, and message-sticks like theirs are not found amongst savages in other parts of the world; and they indicate a gradual advancement in knowledge and invention, which, in the long course of ages, if their country had not been invaded by the whites, might perhaps have resulted in civilization. Their supply of food, however, was always uncertain, and mainly dependent on their exertions as hunters and fishers; and only in those districts where the cultivation of indigenous or accidentally-imported roots and plants was practicable could they have emerged from their condition as savages.
The stone implements of the natives of Australia—the tomahawks, knives, adzes, the chips for cutting and scraping, the sharpening-stones, the stones for pounding roots and grinding seeds, those used in fishing and in making baskets, and the sacred stones carried by the old men, are all described with as much care as it was possible for me to employ.
The ordinary tomahawk of the natives of Victoria consists of a stone, in shape resembling many of the axe-heads found in Europe, Asia, and America, and a wooden handle bent over the stone and firmly tied with twine. Gum is used to keep the wood in its place and to perfect the union. When complete, it is a strong and useful implement; and a native with one of these can very quickly cut off a large limb from a tree, or make holes for his feet when he is climbing. There are found also in the mirrn-yong heaps and in the soil very large tomahawks of different forms which, it is said by the natives, were employed in splitting trees. One in the possession of Mr. Stanbridge is nearly
