was a man, he was an object of interest:
able, as he was, to remember the first big
ships that entered Sydney harbour, when the
penal settlement was founded; the sensations
of the tribe to which he, then a boy,
belonged, when they beheld them; and the
terror which prevailed when the savage, for the
first time, saw the face and the clothed form of
the white man. He had often talked to me of
these and other such matters; but I was then
too young to take any interest in his discourse
further than what related to the best bays to fish
in, or the localities in which "five corners,"
"ground berries," and "gollions" (native fruits),
were most plentiful. As for fish, even if I had
had, now, any desire to catch them, I could not
have done it in any of the bays of Sydney
harbour. Like the kangaroo and the emu, they
had retreated beyond the bounds of civilised and
busy life. They were now only to be caught
in the bays outside "the head." As to the
native fruits I have mentioned, I doubt
whether I could have obtained a quart within
ten miles of Sydney, had I offered five guineas
for it.

King Bungaree (after swallowing another
"loan"), in reply to my questions, said that
when the tribe to which he belonged first beheld
the big ships, some thought they were sea-
monsters; others that they were gigantic birds,
and the sails were their wings; while many
declared that they were a mixture of gigantic fish
and gigantic bird, and that the boats which
were towed astern, were their young ones. He
heightened his description, by acting the
consternation of the tribe on that occasion. He
told me they were too much terrified to offer
any hostile demonstrations, and that when they
first heard the report of a musket, and of a
ship's gun, they fancied those weapons were
living agents of the white man; that, where the
town of Sydney was situated, kangaroos
formerly abounded, and that these animals were
seldom speared or interfered with; that, fish
and oysters, and the native fruits, were their
chief articles of food, and that animals—the
kangaroo and opossum—were killed only to
supply the little amount of clothing then required
amongst them; that the use of the hook and
line was unknown until the establishment of
the colony; and that a spear constructed for
the especial purpose was the only means
they had of taking fish in the shallow waters
of the bays. The deep sea fish—the "schnapper,"
the " king fish," the " grounder," and
the rock cod—were beyond their reach.
Mullet, whiting, and mackerel, which came
in large shoals within range of the spear
were the only species they had tasted.
Sometimes a shark, which had followed the smaller
fish into the shallow water, and swam with
his fins above the surface, would fall a victim to
the spear.

Each tribe rarely numbered more than fifty
or sixty, and the chief was, by right, the oldest
man in it. When they increased and multiplied
beyond that number, fifty or sixty, there
was a new tribe formed, and they occupied a
distinct tract of land, to which they were
required to confine themselves. This tract of land
rarely exceeded an area of forty miles in extent.
Strange to say, the tribes beyond Parramatta
did not understand the language of the Sydney
(Wooloomooloo) tribe. The tribes on the north
shore had no communication with the tribes on
the south shore, except when they invaded
each other—which was seldom—and did battle.
On these occasions they swam the harbour,
carrying their spears, waddies (clubs),
boomerangs, and shields, on their heads. The object
of these invasions was to plunder each other of
women. King Bungaree denied that they were
cannibals; but admitted that they roasted and
tasted the enemies whom they slew in battle.
The waddies and spears of the different tribes
were not exactly alike in make, but the
boomerang was of uniform construction; and I
know, of my own personal experience
subsequently acquired, that amongst all the savage
tribes of New Holland the use of the boomerang
is universal. Sir Thomas Mitchell, late
Surveyor-General of Australia, and a very able
mathematician, when he first saw the flight of a
boomerang, and examined the weapon,
exclaimed: "The savage who invented this, in
whatever time, was gifted by the Creator with
a knowledge which He has withheld from
civilised man." And, writing of the boomerang
propeller, Sir Thomas says: "That, rotary
motion can be communicated to an instrument,
acting as a screw, so as to be sustained in air,
without causing that fluid to recede, is
suggested by the flight of the boomerang, a missile
which few in this country can have seen used,
or seen at all. This is a thin flat weapon,
shaped somewhat like a new moon, but not so
pointed at the cusps, and more resembling in the
middle an elbow than an arc, being about two
feet long, two inches broad, seldom so much as
a quarter of an inch thick, and made of hard,
heavy wood. The natives of Australia throw
this to great distances, and to great heights in
the air, imparting to it two sorts of motion, one
of which is direct, the other rotary, by which
last the missile revolves round its own centre of
gravity, having a twist into the plane of a very
fine screw. The effect of this almost imperceptible
screw on air all who have been witnesses
to a boomerang's flight will remember. To
those who have not we can only say that
the rotary motion survives the direct impetus
with which the weapon is made to ascend,
so as to make it screw its way back to the
very spot from whence it was thrown, thus
enabling mere gravitation to undo all the
effect of the thrower's arm in tending it
upwards."

The children, male and female, of the
aborigines were taught, or rather made, to swim,
by being put into deep water soon after they
were born. As swimmers and divers, I do
not think the blacks of New South Wales
were superior to the Arabs at Aden, or the
Cingalese at Ceylon, but they were certainly