Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/40



The natives have few tools; the principal one is the stone axe, which resembles the stone celts found in Europe. This useful and indispensable implement is of various sizes. It is made chiefly of green stone, shaped like a wedge, and ground at one end to a sharp edge. At the other end it is grasped in the bend of a doubled piece of split sapling, bound with kangaroo sinews, to form a handle, which is cemented to it with a composition of gum and shell lime. This cement is made by gathering fresh wattle gum, pulling it into small pieces, masticating it with the teeth, and then placing it between two sheets of green bark, which are put into a shallow hole in the ground, and covered up with hot ashes till the gum is dissolved. It is then taken out, and worked and pulled with the hands till it has become quite stringy, when it is mixed with lime made of burnt mussel shells, pounded in a hollow stone — which is always kept for the purpose — and kneaded into a tough paste. This cement is indispensable to the natives in making their tools, spears, and water buckets. The stone axe is so valuable and scarce that it is generally the property of the chief of the tribe. He lends it, however, for a consideration, to the best climbers, who use it to cut steps in the bark of trees, to enable them to climb in search of bears, opossums, birds, and nests, and also to cut wood and to strip bark for their dwellings. For the latter purpose the butt end of the handle of the axe is made wedge-shaped, to push under the sheets of bark and prize them off the trees.

Another stone tool, like a chisel without a handle, is used in forming weapons and wooden vessels. With splinters of flint and volcanic glass the surface of wooden articles is scraped and smoothed, and every man carries a piece of hard, porous lava, as a rasp, to grind the points of spears and poles. These stone implements, although well known to the middle-aged aborigines of the present day, are, in consequence of the introduction of iron, not now in use or to be met with, excepting about old aboriginal camping places.

The writer lately found, in a ploughed field, two stones, which he showed to one of the oldest and most intelligent men of the Colac tribe. One of them is an