In the extensive tracts occupied by sands and clays, and in which no stone fit for tools is to be obtained, the natives must have cast wistful eyes towards the more favored localities where all the best materials for stone implements are to be found; and one may conjecture how they would humble themselves and entreat those who could supply them with good materials. Their best feathers, their best woods, their favorite skins, and even their wives and daughters, would be offered in exchange for the basalts and diorites which occur on and in the neighbourhood of the Great Range.
The stone tomahawk is all-important to the native, and in some districts he could scarcely maintain existence without it.
The natives of Victoria, according to the information I have obtained, appear to have used the one-edged tomahawk exclusively.[1] I have not found a single example of the two-edged tomahawk in Victoria. Their Merring, Karr-geing, Kal-baling-elarek, or Kul-bul-en-ur-uk, in this respect, and also in its being ground and sharpened, differs from the tomahawk of the West Australian natives, which is made of granular quartzose granite or of quartz-rock, and fashioned by repeated blows until the desired shape is attained. It will be seen, too, that the wooden handle is different.
The opinion entertained by many archaeologists that ground and polished tools belong to the Neolithic period, and those made by successive blows to the Palæolithic period, is reasonable enough, and probably, as regards some extinct races, true; but we have here in Australia, on the east, highly-polished implements, and on the west, in districts where rocks susceptible of polish are not to be obtained, rude stone axes made by a succession of blows. There is no method by which we can distinguish a difference of period if we examine stone implements. In the hands of a native of Australia you see a highly-polished stone axe of diorite and a knife or adze of granular quartzite or porcelainite made by blows, and which could not be easily ground by any contrivance
- ↑ Lieut. Breton, R.N., in his Excursions in New South Wales, &c., 1830-3, gives figures of two-edged stone tomahawks which, he says, were used by the natives of New South Wales. They are like those of the West Australians in some respects; but the edges appear to have been polished, and the wooden handles are double—not single and brought to a sharp point, as they are in West Australia.
edge, and so hard and sharp as to enable them to fell a very large tree with it. There is only one place that I ever heard of in that country where this hard and splitting stone is to be had. The natives call it Kar-heen, and say that it is at a distance of three hundred miles from the coast inland. The journey to fetch them is therefore one of great danger and difficulty—the tribes who inhabit the immediate localities being very savage and hostile to all others. … They vary in weight from four to fourteen pounds; the handles being thick pieces of wood split and then doubled up, the stone being in the bend and fixed with gum, very carefully prepared for the purpose, so as to make it perfectly secure when bound round with sinews."
This description is sufficiently accurate. The hard black stone was no doubt diorite or basalt, and the rock on which the axe was ground a very rough sandstone. Mr. G. S. Lang says that the natives called St. Kilda Euro-Yoroke, which was the name of the sandstone found there, and used by them to fashion and sharpen their stone tomahawks. The statement that the stone was found at a distance of three hundred miles from the coast is valueless; the natives could not convey even approximately a notion of a distance so great. They must have said it was Wirrate-wirrate bullarto—a long way off—perhaps thirty miles or more. That the natives of Australia travelled great distances for the purpose of procuring stones is certain, but not in Victoria.