Confessions of a Beachcomber - Edmund James Banfield (suggested reading txt) 📗

of nests and in migratory flights.

Piccaninnies at this date remind us of the genesis of the boomerang as they sport with the sickle-shaped leaves (or rather PHYLLODIA) of the ACACIA HOLOCARPA as with miniature boomerangs. The piccaninny of the remote past chuckled gleefully as the jerked leaf returned to it. As a boy he fashioned a larger and permanent toy, surreptitiously using his father's stone tomahawk and shell knife, while the old man was after wallaby with a waddy. As a young man, hunting or fighting, he found his boyish toy a very effective missile. Even for a straight shot it had a longer range and far higher velocity, with less strength expenditure, than the waddy or nulla-nulla; and its homing flight had practical if not frequent uses. In his childhood, adolescence and maturity the black of to-day so graphically summarises a chapter in the history of his race that he who runs may read.

In the origin of the boomerang and the shell fish-hook we have instances, hardly to be doubted, of direct inspirations from Nature, proofs of the art and the infinite patience with which she sets her copies and expounds her texts.



WILD DYNAMITE

All the blacks of my acquaintance have had the rough edges of savagedom worn down. Consequently I lay no claim to original research or to the possession of any but common knowledge of the race at large. Learned societies and learned men have done and are doing all that is possible to acquire and accumulate information of the fast vanishing race. I merely record odd incidents, which may or may not prove useful and of interest, or which may bear repetition. An occasional gleam of satisfaction is vouchsafed even to casual and superficial students of human nature.

The supply of bait run out one day when we were fishing off the rocks with throw-lines. Mickie said--"We catch 'em plenty little fella fish with wild dynamite!" I asked him what he knew about dynamite. "Not white fella's dynamite. Wild dynamite--I show you."

Growing on the blistering rocks, with roots, down in the crevices, was a lowly vine, or rather a diffuse, creeping shrub with myrtle-like leaves and racemes of white flowers. "That fella wild dynamite," said Mickie, as he tore up several strands of the plant and bunched them, leaves and all, in his hand. He made a small bundle, and going to an isolated pool in the rocks in which were small fish he beat the leaves with a nulla-nulla, dipping the bruised mass frequently in the water. In a few minutes the fish were darting about erratically, apparently making frantic efforts to get out of the water. One by one they became stupefied and helpless, floating belly up. Mickie filled his hat with them, and as the soporific effects of the juice of the leaves passed off, the remaining fish recovered and were soon swimming about again as if nothing had happened. Mickie had seen dynamite used to kill fish wholesale, hence his adaptation of the name of the plant known to him as "Paggarra," and to botanists as DERRIS SCANDENS.

Another method by which the blacks secure fish in pools left by the receding tide is to scrape off the inner bark of the "Koie-yan" (FARADAYA SPLENDIDA) with a shell and spread it evenly on the bottom of a shallow pit in the sand, and place thereon stones made hot in the fire, or they may rub the powdered bark on hot stones. While still warm the stones are thrown into the water, when the fish become helpless. They die if left in water so impregnated; while the effects of the DERRIS SCANDENS is merely temporarily soporific. How blacks became acquainted with this process of speedily extracting the toxic principle of the FARADAYA, and as speedily dissipating it, is unknown. One generation passes on the knowledge to the other without explanation, and it is accepted as a matter of course, without comment or inquiry.



A CAVERN AND ITS LEGEND

Caves and caverns in the rocks and the tops of the mountains are not favourite resorts of blacks. According to them nearly every mountain has its mysterious lagoon, which none but old men have visited, but which teems with fish and waterfowl. When direct inquiries are made as to the precise locality of any particular lagoon, invariably inconclusive evidence is tendered. "Old man, he bin see 'em;" and, the old man is never forthcoming for cross-examination. The origin of the romance, no doubt, is to be attributed to the desire of the blacks to account to themselves for the water which glitters on the face of the rocks far up the mountains. One boy gave an exceptionally graphic description of a lagoon on the top of one of the highest peaks of Hinchinbrook Island, in which all manner of sea fish revelled. When doubt was expressed as to the possibility of sea-water and sea-fish getting up so far "on top" and it was suggested--"What you think, that old man humbug you?" "Yes," was the ready response; "me think that old fella no tell true. Him humbug." Some blacks possess something wiser than knowledge.

On the northern aspect of Dunk Island, where the sea swirls about the buttresses of the hills, there is a cavern only approachable by boat. The mouth is overhung by vines and ferns, and through the moss which covers the lintel water trickles and splashes with pleasant sound. When the bronze orchid lavishly decorates the rocks with its crinkled flowers of dull gold, the entrance has a specific character; and quite another when the glossy leaves of the umbrella-tree form the relief and its long radiating spikes of dull red, bead-like flowers attract the brilliant sun-bird, and big blue and green and red butterflies. Even when the sea is lustrous the cavern, with all the artfulness and grace of the decorations of its portals, is a black blotch--the entrance to something unknowable and unknown--at least to the blacks. None had ever ventured near it and they never will. They tell you how it came to be made. How a long, long time ago, a big man, "all a same debil-debil," took out with his mighty fingers a plug of rock and put it "on top alonga Hinchinbrook." Now the particular decapitated pinnacle of Hinchinbrook is 20 miles away, and out of all proportion. But these facts do not affect the legitimacy of the legend. There is the hole, and there on the top of the far-away mountain the prodigious plug demonstrative evidence too obvious to be set aside on any such plea as the eternal fitness of things. Is not the blue point of the mountain a defiantly triumphant fact? Is not the legend authenticated by tradition and confirmed by topography?

Why, therefore, doubt it for a moment?

And the hole--it goes a long, long way under the mountain. It is a bad place, a very bad place. No one has ever been there. Suppose any fella go inside, bi'mby that fella sick, bi'mby that fella die.

Braving all the honest traditions, one fine day I took a lantern in the boat and induced the boys to row to the entrance of the cave. Neither would venture in; indeed, they did all they could to dissuade me, protesting that evil was sure to befall. A minute's exploration showed that the cave did not extend 30 feet, and that it was dry, and resonant with "the whispering sound of the cool colonnade," with no suggestion of unwholesomeness or weirdness. But the blacks still pass it by. The legend is as indestructible as the odour of attar of roses. Although the boys persist in their account of the origin of the cave, it is known to them as "Coo-bee co-tan-you," which signifies "that hole made by the meteor," or, literally, "falling-star hole."

Romance, too, follows the Hinchinbrook pinnacle. Some local blacks regard it with awe, believing that it covers a deep hole in the mountain in which the winds and rain are pent up. When a malignant "debil-debil" lifts the peak away the elements escape, roaring and hissing with anger and mischief. When tired, they retire sulkily to the hole, which the "debil-debil" blocks with the monstrous rock. Fine weather then prevails, and the rock, which has been hidden away among the mists by the fiend, becomes visible once more.



A SOULFUL DANCE

Of the many corrobborees that I have witnessed, the most novel in conception was performed on Dunk Island by blacks who came from the neighbourhood of Princess Charlotte Bay, some 200 miles to the north.

The imitation of the frolicsome skip and wing movements of the native companion is one of the typical dances of the aboriginals frequenting open plains where the great birds assemble. In its performance the men--decorated with streaks and daubs of white and pink clay, and wearing in their hair down and feathers--form a circle, and bowing their bodies towards the centre, chuckle in undertones to the pianissimo tapping of boomerangs and the beating of resonant logs. In strict time, to a crescendo accompaniment, the performers throw out their arms, extend their necks downward and upward, simultaneously utter squawks in imitation of the bird, and finally whirl about, flapping their arms, ceasing instantly by a common impulse. The ballet is modelled in accordance with a study of Nature.

The corrobboree of the Princess Charlotte Bay boys also owes its origin to Nature, but Nature in one of her most unpoetical moods--a mood as typical of Constantinople as of their native shores, for its motive is nothing more than an everyday dogfight.

Shall the uncultured blacks not have their own way when they seek entertainment, holding "as it were the mirror up to Nature," and finding that it reflects the commonest of all themes? They among all the nations of the world alone have discovered what to them is music and the poetry of motion in an occurrence that has no geographical limitations, is not restricted by language, nor to be withered by age.

While the orchestra taps its boomerangs and claps its hands and grunts, two boys in mere nature progress towards the fire in a series of stiff, stilty jumps, the legs from the hips to the ankles being rigid; then the knees shake in a rapid succession of spasmodic jerks; the actors emit sounds resembling the preliminary growling and snarling of a couple of angry dogs. Action and utterance develop in speed and time as the fight begins in earnest, and the art of the performance consists in its duration--the powers of sustained effort, the accuracy of time maintained between the orchestra and the actors, and the fidelity to nature of the vocal effects. A singularly uncouth subject for an opera or even a ballet--the snarling, scuffling and snapping of quarrelsome dogs whose fury is working up to a climax, and it soon becomes as monotonous to unaccustomed ears as the masterpieces of some German composers to those whose musical education is below the required standard; but the boys will spend the best part of the long night in its unvarying repetition.

Once a variation did take place. "Yellowbelly" (pronounced decently "Yellowby") danced first in the company of giggling "Peter;" and then fat "Charley" and big "Johnny," shy "Mammeroo" and little deaf "Antony," in turns, his body glistened with perspiration, and his eyes sparkled with the joy of a phenomenal accomplishment. All beholders were filled with wonder and gratification. It was Yellowby's night out. The spirit of Terpsichore was upon him. His enthusiasm amounted to exultation. He was astonishing not only the silent and subdued natives of Dunk Island, but even his own familiar friends. Never had any seen such a classic interpretation of the theme, such brilliant leg movement, nor