Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/89

84 measure. They can only be taken by the scraping process during the warm weather. In the cold weather they are all in their holes, so that when a noble savage has a longing for a meal of these favourite shellfish whilst they are hypernating, his poor drudge of a wife has to turn out in the cold and procure the delicacy for him by groping with her hands down the holes of the little creatures, and as the entrances to the holes are all under water, it is both a cold and tedious undertaking to capture a dish of them sufficient for a meal. They have a net also very nearly as fine in the mesh as a coarse cheese cloth, with which during the spawning season they take millions of young fish, many of which are less than an inch in length. Besides these, at the same time they catch immense numbers of young lobsters and shrimps, or prawns, all of which are mixed up together and cooked in the same condition as they are taken from the water. This dish is deemed a luxury of the highest order by the aboriginal epicure. The cooking of these small fry consists merely in boiling them very slowly until the shrimps become red, when the dish is ready. The aboriginal pot made for this sole purpose is an elbow or knot of a tree scooped out until it becomes a mere shell of wood. This vessel is set upon cold ashes, which have been placed to the thickness of two inches over red-hot coals, so prepared for the purpose. After a considerable expenditure of aboriginal patience the water in the wooden pot becomes hot enough to turn the shrimps red, but it never gets beyond the faintest simmer. When cooked this mess looks altogether so disgusting that we never had sufficient temerity to taste of it, even although frequently invited thereto by