Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/134

 72 EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. and said there should be no fighting on this place. He would not take a weapon in hand, but went and broke all the spears which he could get hold of. The Point Malcolm blacks showed great forbearance, but the Mundoos were very bouncible. One Kaingani, all dripping with grease and red ochre, named Doughboy, especially distinguished himself. I saw him after much vociferous abuse aim and hurl a spear at one of the other side, but as he did so his foot slipped, and he only stuck it in the mud and broke it to pieces, and everybody laughed. After a great scrimmage, in which the old women, as usual, bore a distinguished part, the Mundoos went off to their own country. 30th. In conversing with the natives to-day I found that a word in Meyer’s vocabulary bears a very different meaning from what he says it does. It is the word mutturi, and its compounds. He says it means holy, sacred; whereas I find that it means generous, open-handed, having plenty to give away. I am mutturi when I have plenty of flour to give away. This is rather an important difference, and illustrates how easy it is to make mistakes in learning an unwritten language. 6th December. Very short of meat, so had to go and hunt for some myself. Pretty successful. The people on the run here positively refuse to sell us any meat, so we are compelled to live on fish and game; and, nice as these things are in moderation, one only has to get nothing else for three months to be made to feel a keen longing for beef and mutton. 12th. Every day’s experience shows that the natives are lamentably deficient in one respect, that is in governing their children. The little ones are allowed to do just as they like, and are never corrected. It leads one to see the need of those Proverbs of Solomon, which relate to the duty of correcting children. These heathen never do it. The men think nothing of thrashing their wives, knocking them on the head, and inflicting frightful gashes; but they never beat the boys. And the sons treat their mothers very badly. Very often mere lads will not hesitate to strike and throw stones at them.