Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/148

 a card. But the boomerang whose path has not been explained pursued a totally different course.

E D C F GA B THROWER.

Thrown to the right of the thrower (A) it went in a circuit. Starting from A it would at B be 40 or 50 feet high still rising it would be at D more than 100 feet high and 80 or 100 paces from the thrower; at G it might be as high or higher than at D, and would then, if a perfect instrument, float in gyratory rotations to the ground. Thrown almost perpendicularly so as to strike the ground between A and B it would rise in the air and pursue a course similar to, but not quite so lengthy as, that just described. The point at G might be variable according to the strength imparted. The boomerang might finish its main circle at F, or, if remarkably good, might first pass over the thrower's head, and then commence its descending gyrations.

A boomerang made narrower and heavier would make the circuit without rising more than 40 feet, and continue its course (without ever assuming a horizontal position) until it reached the ground (after passing the thrower) at or beyond B. Rarely there were left-handed natives. They made boomerangs which circled from left to right. They could, however, by lowering the head and bringing the left hand over the right shoulder, throw a right-hand boomerang; and, vice verad, a right-handed man could throw a left-hand boomerang. Though one side of the instrument was flatter than the other, and the warpe of each half were almost, but not quite, identical, it was not the fact that so long as the flattest side was thrown outermost the boomerang might be thrown indifferently by making a handle of either end. Therefore the left-handed man could not throw a right-hand boomerang by simply making a handle of the opposite end to that used by the right-handed man, and throwing from left to right. The natives when fashioning a boomerang always insisted that if it performed the first half of its circuit well, and failed in its second, it was because the end not used as a handle was deficiently warped, and they proceeded to warp it properly. There remains, to vouch for their accuracy, the fact that each boomerang was constructed so that it could only be thrown properly by using the end fitted by the fashioner to be the handle.

The catalogue remarked at South Kensington (p. 35) that the fac-simile of the Egyptian boomerang, 167 to 169, fig. 18, with practice could be maile to return to within a few feet of the feet of the thrower." The figure in the catalogue did not show the thickness of the ends of the weapon, or the roundness of its ends, but to anyone conversant with the returning boomerang of Australia, a sight of the facsimile showed that it was absolutely impossible for the so-called Egyptian boomerangs to pursue the path of the Australian.

The same thing may be said of those shown as Dravidian boomerangs. Other weapons were exhibited as "modern African Iron Boomerangs," but unless every missile hurled so as to rotate is to be called a boomerang, it is difficult to discover why the term is thus applied.

A tomahawk or a knife may be made to rotate, but always with forward progress; and a glance at the weapons of the Kolis of Gnzerat, and the Marawar of Madura, as well as those from Kattyawar, in the South