ANECDOTES OF THE AUSTRALIAN BLACKS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3051, 6 April 1881, Page 3

ANECDOTES OF THE AUSTRALIAN BLACKS.

Mr James Dawson's new work on tho Australian Aborigines contains, besides the comprehensive exposition of aboriginal society, a collection of native antecedents, a fac-sirnile of the conveyance by principal chiefs of 100,000 acres of land between Geelong and Queenscliff, and some vocabularies of native words. The Sydney Mail concludes a notice of this most interesting book with the following anecdotes : — " The first white man who made his appearance at Port Eairy (a locality named after a small vessel called the Eairy), was considered by the aborigines to be a supernatural being ; and, as he was discovered in the act of smoking a pipe, they said he must be made of fire, for they saw smoke coming out of his mouth. Though they were very ready to attack a stranger, they took good oare not to go near this man of flro, who very probably owed the preservation of his life to his tobaccopipe. Shortly afterwards a tipsy man was seen. He was considered mad, and everyone ran away from him. " The first ship which was descried by the aborigines was believed to be a hugo bird, or a tree growing in the sea. It created such terror that a messenger was immediately sent to inform the chief of the tribe, who at once declared the man to be insane, and ordered him to be bled by the doctor. " When the natives first saw a bullock, they were encamped at the waterhole Wunrong Ytering in Spring Creek, near the spot where the village of Woolsthorpe now stands, and were engaged in flailing. The animal, which was evidently a stray working bullock from some exploring party, and which had a sheet of tin tied across his face to drevent him fiom wandering, came down to the waterhole to drink. The natives, who had never in their lives heard of such a large beast, instantly took to their heels. In the night the bullock came to the encampment and walked about it bellowing, which so terrified the people in the camp that they covered themselves up with their rugs and lay trembling till sunrise. In the morning they saw what they believed to be a Muuruup, with two tomahawks at his head ; but no one dared to move. Immediately after the departure of this extraordinary and unwelcome visitor, a council of war was held ; and the brave men, accompanied by their ■wives and children —who could not, under such alarming circumstances, be left! behind —started in pursuit. The animal was easily tracked, as such footprints had never been seen before. They wero followed four or five miles in a north-easterly direction. The bullock was at length discovered grazing in an open part of the forest. Tho bravest of the warriors went to the front, and, with the whole tribe at their back, approached the animal. They asked if he was a whitefellow, and requested him to give them tho tomahawks he carried on hi 3 head ; whereupon the astonished bullock pawed the ground, bellowed, shook his head, and charged. This so terrified the ' braves' that they fled headlong, and in their precipitate retreat upset men, women, and children, and broke their spears. The natives afterwards told this story with high glee. It used to be narrated in a very humorous way by Gnaweeth, and afforded the women many a laugh at tho expense of the men. It was also told more recently by Weeratt Kuuyuut, when he was considerably over seventy years of age; and he describes it has having occurred when he was a newly-married man, which makes tho dato af the incident to have been about 1821 or '22."