If any certainty could be had that the notices so far collected were all that antiquity could furnish on the subject, a new and very wide field of speculation, of perhaps a still more interesting character, would be opened, in the endeavour to trace the international resemblances between those people known to have used such weapons in the old world, and the tribes who still retain the use of them in the new. Even on the scanty materials here brought together, there is, however, sufficient to excite serious attention in the fact that amongst the ancient nations using the Cateia and its cognate weapons certain peculiar characteristics are distinctly traceable, such as the prevalence among them, from the earliest periods, of Amazonian habits, and there being in almost every instance of the white variety of mankind, and of the Xanthous family of that variety, characteristics which point in a very marked manner to an Indo-European origin.
Now there are in Australia two distinct races of men, one of which is clearly of the white variety, as appears from the colored drawings which accompany M. Péron's Voyage to Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales in 1824. What, then, shall we say? Has the European or Indo-European weapon, with its characteristic name, been introduced into Australia by these lighter-complexioned islanders; and are these far-separated savages members of the same great Japhetic stock, of whom we have this testimony from the oldest and most authentic of human records, 'By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided' —(Gen. c. x. v. 5.)?"
The drawings which accompany Mr. Ferguson's paper are very interesting. Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7, in Plate I., are Australian weapons, and represent the boomerang which returns when thrown; and Figs. 5 and 6 represent accurately enough the Li-lil or Bol-lair. The figures from Rosellini and others are those of weapons not in the least like the "come-back" boomerang, but one is not very different from the Leonile or Langeel of the Victorian natives. The weapons figured on the coins might be such as would return when thrown; but neither the form of them nor the manner in which they are held would suggest that they had that property.
The figure entitled "Sabre à ricochet," from Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes, par M. Péron, atlas, tab. xxx., as given by Mr. Ferguson, is nearly that of the Kul-luk of the Gippsland natives. It is neither a Wonguim nor a Barn-geet. Probably a mistake was made by the artist.
The weapon in the hand of the Belgic Briton (Pl. II., Fig. 6) is shown thus—
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| FIG. 111. |
If the weapon had had the property of the boomerang, it is not probable that the artist would have represented the warrior as holding it by the middle.
