Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/141

136 The whole operation is most simple, and takes much less time to perform than we have taken to describe it; so easily is it done we many times have had a native do it merely to get our pipe lighted.

The best timber for effecting this purpose is red gum (a eucalyptus), pine, grass-tree, and salt-bush. Those timbers of the eucalyptus family, known by the colonists as box, messmate, and stringy bark, are utterly useless for the purpose of generating fire by friction, but for what reason we cannot tell. We only know that such is the fact, though doubtless it is either for their lacking altogether, or containing too much of some requisite principle, this, however, is a question for chemists to solve.

Should it be necessary to make fire when the timber has been saturated by continued rains the native cuts down the log on which he intends to operate until he has got beyond the saturated portion, then he cuts a groove to take the place of the sun crack, and the rubber is split from the heart of a smaller log to ensure dryness. If it be raining at the time fire is required an opossum cloak is held over the operator until the desired end is achieved.

In the matter of tattooing these people differ considerably from other savage races. The tattooing performed by most savages, more especially the New Zealanders, is more like the marking produced by pricking Indian ink or gunpowder into the skin, as practised by seafaring men, than anything else, whilst the tattooing of these natives is prominent enough, even in the dark. One ornament of this kind, which we have found common to all the aboriginal tribes, is the raising of hard, smooth lumps across the back from the