Page:Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales.djvu/40

Rh The following are a few of these aboriginal names:—

The deeper portion of the river bed, where the water has the most fall, and consequently runs the swiftest over the rapids, is called by the natives "Wirruwirrumba."

Plan.—The accompanying plan has been prepared by me from a detail survey which I made in 1901, and shows 12 chains of the channel of the Darling River, from A to J, representing the dykes and pens still existing on the best preserved portion of the ancient fishing locality. Extending upward from A (see plan), there are about 8 chains more of the river floor containing fragments of old fishing pens, but I did not include them in my survey, and therefore they do not appear on the plan.

Near the southern bank, and at a few other places in the bed of the river, there still remain some masses of original rock which have withstood the ravages of time, and are shown in solid black on the plan. The following are the aboriginal names of most of them:—B (see plan) is called Muar; C, Dherraginni; D, Kullur; F, on the northern shore, is known as Kirragurra; G is Wirringga; and H, Munnhagiūr. The rock F is supposed to be haunted by evil spirits called Wundur'ramala'. If a strange blackfellow were to interfere with the fishing pens, these spirits would cause some accident or sickness to befall him.

The blank spaces on the plan were, in the olden days, studded with fishing pens, of which the wreckage is visible in many places in the shape of scattered boulders and indistinct outlines of former enclosures. But the whole of the river floor was not occupied with the maze of traps. A waterway had to be left for the fish to travel up to the catching pens of families located higher up-stream, and for this purpose the most uneven portions of the bottom were selected, because the least suitable for building upon.

The black, sinuous lines drawn upon the plan represent the walls of the different pens, and groups of pens, with the "wings" or outlying walls which guide the fish into the enclosures. I have not shown the openings into the traps, because they were sometimes made in one part of the wall, and sometimes in another, according to the part of the stream in which the "school" of fish were approaching.

At the point marked with a cross on the plan, on the southern bank, between C and A, there are about two dozen grinding-places, worn in the rocks by the natives sharpening their stone hatchets. About 3 chains eastward, or up the river from A, there are a number of similar grinding-places.

Photographic view.—The photograph from which the zinc-plate has been prepared was taken from some high ground on the left bank of the Darling River, a few yards easterly from the point marked A on the plan, and faces downward and diagonally across the channel, in a generally north-westerly direction, taking in a perspective view of most of the fishing-pens shown on the plan. The large horizontal rock on the left-hand side of the photograph is the same as the rock marked B on the