Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/101

Rh conquerors are matched; and the last couple decide the championship. The event is followed by a promiscuous wrestling, and the game terminates with shouting, just as among white people. One of the favourite games is football, in which fifty, or as many as one hundred players engage at a time. The ball is about the size of an orange, and is made of opossum-skin, with the fur side outwards. It is filled with pounded charcoal, which gives solidity without much increase of weight, and is tied hard round and round with kangaroo sinews. The players are divided into two sides and ranged in opposing lines, which are always of a different 'class' — white cockatoo against black cockatoo, quail against snake, &c. Each side endeavours to keep possession of the ball, which is tossed a short distance by hand, and then kicked in any direction. The side which kicks it oftenest and furthest gains the game. The person who sends it highest is considered the best player, and has the honour of burying it in the ground till required next day. The sport is concluded with a shout of applause, and the best player is complimented on his skill. This game, which is somewhat similar to the white man's game of football, is very rough; but as the players are barefooted and naked, they do not hurt each other so much as the white people do; nor is the fact of an aborigine being a good football player considered to entitle him to assist in making laws for the tribe to which he belongs. The throwing of spears at a mark is a common amusement. Young people engage in the pastime with toy spears. A number of boys will arrange themselves in a line: one of the party will trundle swiftly along the ground, about ten yards in front of them, a circular piece of thick bark about a foot in diameter, and, as it passes them, each tries to hit it with his toy spear. They amuse themselves also with throwing wands, fern stalks, and rushes at objects, and at each other. The toy boomerang is much lighter and more acute in the angle than the war boomerang, and has a peculiar rounding of one of its sides, which has the effect of making it rise in the air when thrown along the ground, and return to the thrower when its impetus has been expended. It requires much skill, and study of the wind, to throw it aright. On dark nights this boomerang will sometimes be lighted at one end and thrown into the air, with an effect very like fireworks. This boomerang is also thrown into flocks of ducks, parrots, and small birds, among which it commits great havoc-occasionally cutting off their heads as with a knife.