but the blacks knew well how to obtain a clean and cool draught. They scratched a hole in the sand beside the pool, thus making a filter, in which the water rose cool but muddy. They next threw into the hole some tufts of long grass, through which they sucked the cooler water, freed in this manner from sand or gravel.[1]
Stokes refers to the ingenuity and great fertility of resources of the natives in all situations, and particularly when journeying in apparently waterless tracts. They were never at a loss. Besides procuring water from the roots of trees, they collected also the dew from the leaves of shrubs.[2]
The Bottle-tree of Northern Australia furnishes a refreshing beverage. Binkey (Brachychiton Delabeehei) is generally found in stony scrub land, and is remarkable on account of its enlarged trunk, similar in shape to a lemonade bottle. The natives cut holes in the soft trunk, where the water lodges and rots the trunk to its centre. These trunks are so many artificial reservoirs of water. When a tree has been cut, its resources are not exhausted. The tired hunter, when he sees a tree that has been tapped, cuts a hole somewhat lower than the old cuts, and obtains an abundant supply of the sweet mucilaginous substance afforded by this plant.[3]
One of the myths of the natives, referred to in another part of this work, would lead one to suppose that they were not unacquainted with the fact that the bladder of the frog acts as a reservoir for water—like the pericardium and bladder of the large tortoise of the Galapagos Archipelago—and they may have occasionally killed these reptiles, as well for water as for food.
I cannot learn whether or not the natives of Victoria used any plants as narcotics or sedatives, or whether any herb or shrub in the colony was chewed or eaten as a nepenthetic; but in the Cooper's Creek district the blacks chew Pitcherie, which is believed to be a narcotic, and the men are very fond of it. As preserved in their bags, it presents the appearance of small dried twigs, and is said to be procured from a narrow-leaved shrub growing in the country to the north-west of Cooper's Creek.[4]
- ↑ Major Sir Thomas Mitchell, vol. I., pp. 31 and 197.
- ↑ Discoveries in Australia, by J. Lort Stokes, Commander R.N., 1846, p. 13.
- ↑ A. Thozet, 1866. See Catalogue annexed.
- ↑ Since the above was written, the Government Botanist has addressed a letter to the editor of the Australian Medical Journal respecting this plant. He says:—"Some weeks ago I was asked by our last president about the origin of the Pitury, a stimulant said to be of marvellous power, and known to be in use by the Aborigines of Central Australia. It so happened that after years of efforts to get a specimen of the plant, I at last, this week, obtained leaves, and although I have seen neither flowers nor fruits, and although these leaves are very similar to those of various otherwise widely disallied plants, I can almost with certainty, after due microscopic examination, pronounce those of the Pitury as derived from my Duboisia Hopwoodii, described in 1861 (Fragm. Phytogr. Austr. II., 138). This bush extends from the Darling River and Barcoo to West Australia, through desert scrubs, but is of exceedingly sparse occurrence anywhere. In fixing the origin of the Pitury, now a wide field for further enquiry is opened up, inasmuch as a second species of Duboisia (D. myoporoides, R. Br.) extends in forestland from near Sydney to near Cape York, and is traced also to New Caledonia, and lately by me also to New Guinea. In all probability this D. myoporoides shares the properties of D. Hopwoodii, as I now find that both have the same burning acrid taste. Though the first known species is so near to us, we never suspected any such extraordinary properties in it as are now established for the later discovered species. Moreover the numerous species
