throwing them on the bank. Others on the river brink speared the fish when thus enclosed, as they appeared among the reeds, in which small openings were purposely made to attract them. In this manner they speared with astonishing despatch some enormous cod (Peel's perch), but the largest were struck by the chief from his canoe with a long barbed spear. After a short time the young men in the water were relieved by an equal number, upon which they came out shivering—the weather being very cold—to warm themselves in the centre of a circular fire, kept up by the gins on the bank. The death of the fish in their practised hands was almost instantaneous, and caused by merely holding them by the tail with the gills immersed."[1]
At the mouth of the Murray, and at the Lakes, fish are caught with the three-pronged spear;[2] and the natives of the Bellingen Eiver (lat. 30° 30′ S.) use a spear of the same kind.[3] It is mentioned also by Peron.[4]
Near Yelta, on the Murray, fish are speared with the paddle, which has hooked grains at one end, made of kangaroo leg-bones.[5]
Collins observed the several modes of catching fish as practised on the sea-coast. On one occasion he saw the men killing fish with the fiz-gig—an instrument made of the wattle, having a joint in it, fastened by gum, and from fifteen to twenty feet in length. It was armed with four barbed prongs, the barb being a piece of bone secured by gum.[6]
Lieut.-Col. Mundy was much pleased with the sight of a native using the fish-spear. "Just opposite La Perouse's monument," he says, "we saw a black spearing the rock-cod and groper, which feed on the shell-fish torn from the rocks in stormy weather. The figure of this man poised motionless on a pedestal of rock, with his lance ready to strike, the waves dashing up to his feet, was a subject for a bronze statue."[7]
4. By weirs.—The natives are ingenious in constructing weirs both in salt and fresh water. In the former they are placed in the flats left nearly dry at low water, and in the latter so as to take advantage of floods, or an increased artificial flow of water, which they manage by constructing dams, or excavating the outlet of a lake or lagoon.
They have also movable dams. On the Bogau, "fishing is left entirely to the gins, who drag every hole in a very effectual and simple manner, by pushing before them, from one end of the pond to the other, a movable dam of long, twisted dry grass, through which the water only can pass, while all the fish remain and are caught."
In the Gwydir, Major Mitchell found osier-nettings of neat workmanship. The frames were as well squared as if they had been done by a carpenter, and
- ↑ Interior of Eastern Australia, by Major T. L. Mitchell, F.G.S., 1838, vol. I., p. 266.
- ↑ The Narrinyeri, by the Rev. Geo. Taplin, 1874.
- ↑ Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay, by Clement Hodgkinson, 1845.
- ↑ "La pèche leur est familière, et la fouène est l'instrument que nous leur avons vu employer de préférence: ils dressent aussi des pièges, pour le même objet, sur les bords de la rivière Vasse."—M. F. Péron, Vol. III., p. 162, 1800-1804.
- ↑ Lower Murray Aborigines, by Peter Beveridge, 1861.
- ↑ New South Wales, by Lieut.-Col. Collins, 1804.
- ↑ Our Antipodes, by Lieut.-Col. Mundy, 1857.
