Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/251

222 itself as it whizzes (or walks as natives say) through the air in its circular and ascending flight; and in a crowded fight it is a very formidable missile, owing to the difficulty of avoiding its apparently ubiquitous and hap-hazard course. "Too much kylie walk" was the description given us of a native fight by one who had been prevented from joining the affray by an attack of illness, which he defined as "too much cough."

The natives take great pains in the manufacture and finish of their kylies, and I found Binnahan and a black uncle one day very busy adorning his stock of them in a fanciful pattern of emerald green and vermilion, from the contents of a shilling colour box which we had given her. These weapons are by no means to be despised as a means of supplying the table with game when in the hands of a clever native, and when the birds at which they are thrown are of a gregarious nature, (as cockatoos or wild fowl,) though of course the kylie is no match for the gun as far as filling the larder is concerned.

But the use of a fowling-piece seems to come as naturally to the natives as that of their ruder arms, and it is a frequent practice with the colonists to employ one of them as a sort of hunter, or game procurer, especially when the bronze-winged pigeon is in season. These lovely birds have often been described, but no words can picture the beauty of the quickly changing hues of the neck and breast, upon which the light glances and flashes as it does on the plumage of the humming birds. The pigeon when in full feather requires to be aimed at either on the wing, or from behind if taken sitting, as otherwise the thick plumage of the breast prevents the shot from penetrating.