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| FIG. 87. |
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| FIG. 88. (Scale ¼.) |
of the Port Essington natives, described by Macgillivray as being four feet in length, and made of the tough hard wood called Wallaru—a kind of gum-tree—the ironbark of New South Wales. The natives fight with them only at close quarters.
Mr. Suetonius H. Officer informs me that the natives of the Murray, according to their own account, were accustomed to use stone-headed spears. Mr. Officer, however, has seen none. It is not at all improbable that the natives of the Murray procured stone-headed spears from the northern tribes, and they may have made imitations of them.
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| FIGS. 89, 90, 91, 92, 93. (Scale 1/10.) |
A model of a spear (Fig. 87), said to be from the Far North, has been sent to me by a gentleman well acquainted with native weapons. The head is made of greenstone, and is polished and brought to a fine point. The stone is attached to a long well-shaped spear of hard wood by sinews and gum. The lower end is not hollowed, and it could not therefore be thrown with the Kur-ruk or Womerah. I cannot believe that this spear is in common use. It differs altogether from the spears used by the natives of Port Darwin. All the stone spearheads I have seen have been made by striking off chips. Not one is ground or polished.
The stick by which spears are thrown—Kur-ruk, or Gur-reek (Yarra tribe), Murri-wun (Goulburn tribe), Meera, or Womerah—is shown in several forms in Figs. 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, and 93. Three aspects of Fig. 88 are shown. It is a beautiful implement, and apparently an old one. The details of the
