Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/74

69 judiciously mixing hot ashes with damp earth, wherein the wood is manipulated until it becomes sufficiently supple for the required purpose. It is then bent round the axe head until the two flat sides meet, when they are firmly lashed together by cord, combined with a good plaster of prepared gum. Although this is all the fixing that these impliments [sic] receive, it is wonderful how they remain in the haft; a novice in the matter reading this discription [sic], would be inclined to imagine that the axe head so fixed would fly off almost at the first half-dozen strokes, but it is not so; for many and many a canoe has been cut with these instruments, without their becoming the least loose even, and when the blunt edge is taken into consideration, it will be quite palpable how enormous must be the labour, and how numerous must be the blows required, to release a sheet of bark, large enough for a canoe, from a tree. As a matter of course now and then these implements will become loose in the middle of some operation, but what of that; even an American axe will get the haft broken occasionally. Ere the advent of Europeans these primitive axes were the only cutting tools the aborigines possessed, unless sharp flint-scales and broken mussel shells can be classed under that head.

The natives hailed the European tomahawk on its first introduction as the greatest boon which was ever conferred on their savage lot; and to hear, as we have done, an old aborigine, even at this day, describing the sensation caused by the appearance of the first amongst his tribe, is of the richest. The news of the appearance of this most wonderful weapon spread far and wide in very short time, and