Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/31

Rh A small water-bag, called 'paanuung,' is formed of the pouch of the kangaroo, which, when fresh, is stuffed with withered grass till it is dry. A strip of skin is fixed across its mouth for a handle.

For carrying water to a distance a bag called 'kowapp' is used. It is made of the skin of a male brush or wallaby kangaroo, cut off at the neck and stripped downwards from the body and legs, and made water-tight by ligatures. The neck forms the mouth of the bag. This vessel is carried on the shoulders by the forelegs.

For keeping a supply of water in dry weather, a vessel called 'torrong'— 'boat' — is made of a sheet of bark stripped from the bend of a gum tree, about four or five feet long, one foot deep, and one wide, in the shape of a canoe. To prevent dogs drinking from it, it is supported several feet from the ground on forked posts sunk in the earth. A wooden torrong is often used in the same way, and is formed from a bend of a gum tree, hollowed out large enough to hold from five to six gallons. As the water which they use is frequently ill-tasted, they put some cones of the banksia into the torrong, in order to give a pleasant flavour to its contents.

The millstone or mortar, so indispensable to the aborigines of the interior for grinding the nardoo seed, is known, but rarely met with among the natives of the sea coast, because they have not the nardoo, and have very little of any other kind of seed to grind. They depend for food almost entirely on animals and roots, which are more abundant than in the interior, where the seed of the nardoo occasionally forms the chief sustenance of the aborigines.

There are two kinds of millstones, both formed of slabs of grey marble or grey slate, of an oval shape, eighteen inches long by twelve inches broad. One kind is hollowed out, like a shallow basin, to a depth of two inches; the seed is put into it, and ground with a flat stone of the same material as the mortar. The other kind is about the same size, but, instead of being basin-shaped, it is flat, and has two parallel hollows, each one foot long, five inches broad, and one inch deep, in which the seed is placed and reduced to flour by two flat stones, held one in each hand, and rubbed backwards and forwards.

While travelling, the natives always carry burning pieces of the dry thick bark of the eucalyptus tree, to light their fires with, and to show the paths at night; but, as these might be extinguished while they are far from any fire, implements for producing combustion are indispensable. These consist of the thigh bone of a kangaroo, ground to a long fine point, and a piece of the dry