Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/266

 192 THE ENCOUNTER BAY TRIBE. to the season, either in fishing or hunting emus, opossums, kangaroos, &c., while the women and children search for roots and plants. If food is not found in the neighbourhood, they remain out sometimes a month or longer, wandering about from place to place. Upon these occasions the aged and sick, who remain at what may be considered their head-quarters (the place from which the tribe derives its name), often suffer severely from want of food. Having to search for food is not the only cause of their wandering about from place to place, but also their frequent wars, and the meetings of the different tribes for purposes of amusement, and the wish of the women to visit their relations in the tribes to which they originally belonged. These circumstances taken together make their residence at one place very uncertain. This wandering life must be considered as the cause of their having no permanent habitations, but merely huts of the rudest construction. Arrived at a place where they intend to remain for the night, the women and children proceed to obtain some branches, which are placed in a semicircle open to the side opposite to that from which the wind is blowing at the time, placed a little closer and with more care in bad weather, so as to afford some shelter from the wind and rain, and constitute the hut. Near the sea, if they are likely to remain for some time, they cover the hut with sea-weed, and the branches composing the framework being arranged something in the form of a quarter of a sphere, or the half of a bee-hive cut perpendicularly, it makes a pretty good defence against the weather. Yet the children and sick persons, no doubt, suffer considerably in bad weather, and the former, left to themselves as soon as weaned, lie huddled together to keep themselves warm. Before the arrival of the Europeans they had two modes of catching fish—with the net and the spear—to which must now be added the hook and the line, which they have learned of the whites. They use the spear at the Murray in catching the large fish, Mallowe. Going into the river as far as he can to use the spear with effect, the native stands like a statue, holding the spear obliquely in both hands ready to strike his prey as it passes.