He builds, in the great rivers, weirs having crooked but continuous passages, and so contrived as to enable him to take the fish by hand. He kills seals, and catches the dugong: and when the whalers visited the southern shores of the continent, he was cunning enough to make signals so as to set many boats in pursuit of any whale that came near the shore, thus rendering the chances of its being stranded almost certain.
He followed the bee to its nest and took its honey, and found a plan of freeing the pupæ of ants from sand and dust so as to make of them a palatable meal. The grubs that are found in the wattle, the honeysuckle, and the gum, the worms that crawl in the earth, and the moths that crowd the granitic rocks of the mountains—each in turn were made to contribute to his support.
His vegetable food was various. The natives of Victoria had to depend mostly on the yam, quandang, currant, raspberry, cherry, the fruits of the mesembryanthemum, the seed of the flax, the sow-thistle, the roots of the flag, water-grass, geranium, and male fern, the pith of the dwarf fern-tree, the native truffle, the leaves of the clover sorrel, the gums of the wattle, &c. He gathered manna, and made sweet drinks of the flowers of the honeysuckle. In the north-western parts of Victoria, he gathered the seeds of the nardoo, and other seeds, and pounded them, and ate the flour either in the form of paste or cakes.
The kumpung, a bulrush almost identical with one found in Switzerland—a species of typha—is eaten during the summer either raw or roasted, and the fibres are used for making twine. In other parts of Australia there are the nuts of palms and the fruit of the Bunya-bunya; and in the more northern districts of the continent, many nuts, seeds, piths, and roots, some of which, though poisonous when gathered, are so treated as to yield excellent fecula and pastes.
The natives, belying the low opinion that has been formed of their intellects, show in many ways that they were not without foresight. They could see the necessity for making provision for the future. It has been shown that they could construct permanent works of art. Grey tells us how he came upon a store of by-yu nuts (fruits of the zamia) in West Australia; and Coxen relates the methods the natives employ in preparing and securing in bags, grass seeds, gums, and other food, in the north-eastern parts of the continent. It was their custom to burn off the old grass and leaves and fallen branches in the forest, so as to allow of a free growth of young grass for the mammals that feed on grass; they protected the young of animals in some parts so as to secure a natural increase; and if they did not actually resort to cultivation (in the ordinary sense), they were at least careful to see that harm was not done to vegetables that yielded food.
That there was a common property in at least some things, is beyond doubt. Many tribes, in other respects having nothing in common, resorted to the Bunya-bunya forest when the fruit was ripe; and the raspberry grounds mentioned by Gideon Lang were also freely given up to neighbouring tribes when the food they yielded was abundant. When a whale was stranded, notice was given, by sending up columns of smoke, that a feast was ready, and hundreds of natives—by right—assembled to share in the bounty of the seas.
