|
In one of the camps we found a blanket -- not, O reader, made of the finest wool, deftly woven at the looms of Witney, but a blanket of Dame Nature's own contrivance, stripped by the aboriginal from the bark of the Australian tea-tree ('Melaleuca squarrosa'), no small shrub, but a noble fellow standing from 150 to 200 feet high, and generally found in the neighbourhood of fresh water, or in the beds of creeks. The bark of this tree is of great thickness, and composed of a series of layers, each of which can be easily separated from its neighbours, and, in fact, much resembling a new book, just issued from the hot-press of the binder. From a portion of this -- the inner skins, I imagine -- the blacks manage to make a flexible, though not over warm, covering for the winter nights, or for the newly-born piccaninnies. The whole of the process I am not acquainted with, but from all I could gather from Lizzie, the bark is stripped in a large sheet at the end of the rainy season, the inner cuticle of several leaves carefully separated from the remainder, and placed in fresh water, weighted with heavy stones to retain it in its position. After the lapse of a certain time, known only to the initiated, it is taken out, hung up to dry, and at a peculiar stage, before all the moisture has evaporated, it is laid on a flat rock, and cautiously beaten with smooth round stones, which operation opens out the web sufficiently to make it quite pliant, after which it is allowed to dry thoroughly, and is then ready for use. These vegetable blankets are very strong, and must be a great protection to the naked savages, but, despite the ease with which they can be obtained, and the small time and labour occupied in their preparation, but few of the gins have them, and none of the men. We also found several fish-hooks of a most peculiar shape, and made out of a curious material. In shape they were like a circular key-ring, with a segment of exactly one-third cut out. One end was ground sharp, and to the other was attached the line, cleverly spun from the tea-tree bark. Now, of all shapes to drive a Limerick hook-maker to despair, none, one would think, could have been invented better than this, for the odds are certainly ten to one against its penetrating any portion of a fish, even though he should have gorged it. The material of which these quaint hooks are made is tortoise or turtle shell, for both tortoises and turtles abound on this coast, the former frequenting the fresh-water creeks and lagoons, and the latter the sea. Whether they were cut out of the solid, or whether a strip was soaked, bent, and then dried in the sun until it became firmly set in the required shape, I never could ascertain, but most probably the former plan was adopted.
|
