Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/172

 has been found in vogue amongst the Australian aborigines wherever they have been discovered, as well on the East coast as at Swan River, thus affording a fresh proof, if any were wanting, to confirm the fact of unity of origin.

I was once, by chance, present at a fight between two tribes, and a description of it may probably prove interesting to some readers: It was caused by a man of one of the tribes carrying off a woman belonging to the other; there were about twenty men engaged on each side; they did not come to close quarters, but stood in two open lines with intervals between each man of about thirty feet; the two lines were distant from each other about sixty yards at the centre, but drawn in at the wings, so as each to form a slight curve; none of the men engaged, shifted their position from the place first taken up. They seemed to be pitted each against an antagonist in the opposite line, whom they kept constantly watching, at the same time poising a spear, and drawing up alternately one leg and then the other, as if for the purpose of rendering them supple, or else going through the pantomimic representation of avoiding a spear. While this was going on, they from time to time, harangued each other, much in the style of Homer's heroes. Occasionally one, as if moved by some sudden impulse, but in reality I suppose, seeing the eye of his antagonist removed from him, would either throw a boomerang or launch a spear. The boomerang, when used in war, is generally thrown so as to take the ground a few yards in front of the person at whom it is aimed, and is intended to wound him as it rises from the earth,