Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/94

64 apathetic looking crew. They talked English with a cockney accent. The strange mob of yapping, small dogs of indistinguishable breeds were the only thing that evinced much vitality.

There were, however, among them a few full-blooded blacks. One of these, a shrewd-looking old woman with a grizzled mop of hair, told us that when she was a baby, "the white people took me, but I lay in the wood and listened to my people talking till I learnt their language; then I ran away and went back to them." We were anxious for an exhibition of throwing the boomerang, or "kyle," as they call it, that curved stick, which, apparently missing its aim, describes an arc and returns to the hand that threw it. The half-castes have lost the art both of throwing and carving the kyle, and are too indolent to achieve either, but an old native stepped out from among them to show us how it was done. He had thick black hair, and his bright dark eyes gleamed in his flat, glistening, ebony face. It was very curious to watch him standing there turning his head about, sniffing and feeling the direction of the wind, and at last he threw the kyle, spinning, circling, returning, many times, while we watched him fascinated, and the motley crowd of half-breeds looked on too at the art they had no skill to practise. They have