Page:Moyarra- An Australian Legend in Two Cantos, 1891.djvu/56

 Europeans arrived amongst them, those ideas had been handed down from a time when their ancestors had a more definite creed. The symbols in use seemed to be relics of a belief of the past; not modern inventions, appearing locally and with widely varying developments.

Of prayer they knew nothing, although they believed in supernatural powers. They had traditions of danger in darkness, and many tribes had fear of the depths of unfathomable water in which some devouring monster was supposed to abide. This may have been (among tribes in the interior) the result of tales of sharks or of crocodiles which abounded on the coast or in rivers.

There were gloomy forests which they feared to penetrate at night; but if any warlike danger was imminent, the natural drove, out the supernatural fear, and they would thread the gloom with resolution.

6(p. 18) "The crescent toy whose airy flight."

About the boomerang (such was the tribal name for the implement at Port Jackson, where the English first settled) the most absurd notions still prevail in England. The settlers applied the term to all the curved missiles used by the natives. The natives had a different name for each variety of their curved missiles. The boomerang which returns to the thrower was only a plaything, and was never used in war; nor, unless the native had no other missile at hand, even to throw at birds.

The massive war-weapon (called among the colonists by the inappropriate name given to the returning plaything) was specially fashioned so that in its hurtling and bounding course it should go straight to the enemy. It could not return. Its shape and the warps which were given to it