small seeds drop out, and they furnish, on account of their starchy albumen, a very wholesome food. The tubers of Portulaca napiformis (Mueller), of wide distribution in tropical Australia, are also used by the natives for food."[1]
The natives are industrious in gathering the ripe seeds of plants in the whole of the large area drained by the River Murray. In some parts, as on the Paroo, the women may be seen in troops returning to their miams with the produce of the day's labor. Each has a little wooden shoe-shaped vessel on her head, full of seeds, and one woman follows another—Indian file. Their dark, perfectly naked figures; their graceful attitudes as they change their steps and gait to preserve the equipoise of the load they bear on their heads; the merry tones of their voices as they exchange gossip by the way; the character of the country, flat, and but scantily covered with vegetation in many places—all in strict harmony with the rather savage aspect of the procession; the warm tints in the sky, and the spears of yellow light gilding every object on which they fall—form altogether a novel and not unpleasing spectacle to the stranger. When the women reach their homes, they proceed to grind the seeds of the nardoo and grass between two stones. The larger flat stone, about eighteen inches in length, one foot in breadth, and about two inches in thickness, is called Yelta on the Darling; and the smaller, held in the hand—the other larger stone resting on the ground—is about six inches in length, five inches in breadth, and one inch or more in thickness. The latter is named Nay-ka. The stones used for grinding in nearly all parts of the Darling are Silurian sandstones, and when the seeds are ground up and made into paste, the natives necessarily swallow a quantity of sand with each morsel. Water is added as they grind the seeds, and they scoop up the paste with the forefinger. In some places the paste is baked into cakes.
Dr. Gummow states that the fruits of the nardoo were used by the natives of the Lower Murray in Victoria; and the seeds of grasses, no doubt, were likewise ground up and eaten.
Dr. Gummow mentions also, as vegetable food eaten by the people of the Lower Murray in Victoria, the sow-thistle, used as a kind of salad, the gum of the acacias, and manna. "The roots of the Compungya," he says in his letter to me, "are in appearance like sticks of celery, and when baked much resemble the potato, from the quantity of starch contained in them."
Mr. Cairns, writing of the food of the natives of the same district, says that, according to information afforded him by Mr. P. Beveridge, the "kumpung springs up from the root, through the water, about the end of August, or as soon as the weather becomes slightly warm. When about a foot in length above the water, the natives pull it up and eat it for food in an uncooked state. In flavor
- ↑ "The Portulaceæ are all innoxious plants, possessed of very little either smell or taste, and not remarkable for any active properties. Their leaves are for the most part fleshy, and often edible. The common purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is cultivated on the continent as a dietetic vegetable, and esteemed, notwithstanding its insipidity, for the readiness with which it takes the flavor of more sapid viands. The seeds of purslane are said to be anthelmintic. . . . The Da-t-kai of Caffraria, the roots of which are eatable, is a purslane."—Outlines of Botany. Burnett, p. 740.
The Government Botanist is to be commended for drawing attention to the properties of this plant. Every explorer and every bushman should make himself acquainted with it.
