Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/749

XI tied to them to attract attention. This signal is called Obal.

The use of gestures accompanying, supplementing, or replacing speech is apparently to some extent inherent in the human race. Children make use naturally, or as some might prefer to say, instinctively, of certain signs. Deaf mutes necessarily use them to communicate their needs and wishes, and some simple signs are so universally used that the term "natural gestures" seems not inapplicable to them.

It has long been known that gesture language is much used among the North American Indians, and some remarkable statements have been made as to the reasons for its use. Burton attributed it to the paucity of language, which compelled the use of supplementary signs. It was even said that certain tribes could not communicate freely unless when daylight permitted the use of gestures. This statement has been completely disposed of by researches of American anthropologists, especially those of Col. Garrick Mallery, to whose exhaustive treatise upon this subject the reader is referred.

It cannot be said that the use of signs by the Australian aborigines is in any way due to paucity of language, theirs being fully competent to provide for every mental or material necessity of their life. Those who have had the opportunity of becoming intimately acquainted with these savages in their social life will agree with me in this statement, and no one can feel the slightest doubt who has heard one of their orators addressing an assembly of the men, and with a flow of persuasive eloquence moulding opinion to his will.

It is somewhat remarkable, and at the same time difficult to explain, that the use of gesture language varies so much in different tribes. Some have a very extensive code of signs, which admit of being so used as to almost amount to a medium of general communication. Other tribes have no more than those gestures