Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/375

1770 coming to us one day with a beard rather longer than his fellows: the next day he came again, and his beard was then almost cropped close to his chin, and upon examination we found the ends of the hairs all burned, so that he had certainly singed it off. Their manner of hunting and taking wild animals we had no opportunity of seeing; we only guessed that the notches which they had everywhere cut in the bark of the large trees, which certainly seems to make climbing more easy to them, might be intended to allow them to ascend these trees in order either to watch for any animal unwarily passing under them which they might pierce with their darts, or to take birds which might roost in them at night. We guessed also that the fires which we saw so frequently as we passed along shore, extending over a large tract of country, and by which we could constantly trace the passage of Indians who went from us in Endeavour's river up into the country, were intended in some way or other for taking the animal called by them kangooroo, which we found to be so much afraid of fire that we could hardly force it with our dogs to go over places newly burnt.

They get fire very expeditiously with two pieces of stick: the one must be round and eight or nine inches long, and both it and the other should be dry and soft: the round they sharpen a little at one end, and pressing it upon the other turn it round with the palms of their hand, just as Europeans do a chocolate-mill, often shifting their hands up and running them down quickly to make the pressure as hard as possible: in this manner they will get fire in less than two minutes, and when once possessed of the smallest spark increase it in a manner truly wonderful. We often admired a man running along shore and apparently carrying nothing in his hand, yet as he ran along just stooping down every 50 or 100 yards; smoke and fire were seen among the drift-wood and dirt at that place almost the instant he had left it. This we afterwards found was done by the infinite readiness every kind of rubbish, sticks, withered leaves, or dry grass, already almost like tinder by the heat