Page:Aboriginesofvictoria01.djvu/467

Rh Mr. Howitt says the stones here figured are like those usually seen at Cooper's Creek. In the flat stone there is a depression which leads out to the edge by a channel. In grinding grass or portulae seed a little water is sprinkled in by the left hand, and the seeds being ground with the stone in the right hand form a kind of porridge, which runs out of the channel into a wooden bowl (Peechee), or a piece of bark. It may then be baked in the ashes, or eaten as it is, by using the crooked forefinger as a spoon. The term used for grinding seeds is Bowar dakoneh.

Nardoo seeds are pounded by the above, placing a few in at a time with the left hand. The "tap-tap" of the process may be heard in the camp far into the night at times. The slabs of sandstone used are, he was told, brought by the Cooper's Creek blacks from somewhere below the parallel of Mount Perll, out on the edge of the western plains (Flinders Range, South Australia).

In the Museum in Melbourne there are two stones—a slab and a stone—in shape like two cones placed base to base, which I am assured are used in some parts of the Darling for grinding nardoo. They are different altogether from the stones ordinarily employed for this purpose, and resemble those made by the Kaffirs. The round grinding-stone is very soft, and, owing to its shape, could be used in no other way than as the Kaffir women use it for reducing boiled corn to paste.

I have made careful enquiries, and I cannot learn that these stones are used anywhere in Australia.

Several sorts of stones are used for pounding roots and seeds. I have seen on the banks of creeks in Victoria hollows in isolated outcropping rocks which may have been used for the reception of seeds or roots. Certainly the stones I observed were hollowed by man, and probably have been employed for some such purpose.

Mr. E. J. Dunn collected a large number of stone implements in Victoria, and amongst them several sharpening-stones. These sharpening-stones are nearly all of the same shape.—(Fig. 219.) They are from four to six inches