The Confessions of a Beachcomber Part 19

MESSAGE-STICKS

There came to our beach one afternoon some poor exiles from Princess Charlotte Bay--300 miles to the north. Exiled they felt themselves to be, and were longing to return to their own country although their engagement for a six months' cruise in quest of the pa.s.sive beche-de-mer had but just begun. One boy stepped along with an air of pride and importance. His companions were deferential to a certain extent, but they, too, exhibited an unusual demeanour. Some of the glory and honour that shone in Mattie's face was reflected in theirs. With the a.s.surance of an amba.s.sador bearing high credentials he saluted me--

"h.e.l.lo, Mister! Good day."

"Good day," I responded. "You come from that cutter?"

Mattie--"Yes, mister. Mickie sit down here, now? Me got 'em letter.

Brother belonga gin, belonga Mickie; him gib it!"

"No; Mickie sit down alonga Palm Islands. Come back, bi'mby."

Mattie (with a downcast air)--"My word! Bo'sun (the brother-in-law) gib it letter belonga Mickie."

"Where letter?" I asked.

Mattie--"Me got 'em," and drawing out a very soiled little parcel, he proudly exposed a piece of greyish wood, about the size and shape of a lead pencil, on which had been cut two continuous intersecting grooves.

"Me giv' 'em Mickie; Bo'sun alonga Cooktown. He want to come up this way now."

The letter was a mere token of material expression of the fact that the sender was in the land of the living, and of his faith in the bearer, who was charged with all the personal messages and news. It was a sad rebuff to Mattie, elated with responsibility and eager to unburden himself of the latest domestic intelligence, to find that Mickie was not on the spot to receive it all. And, after fondling the wooden doc.u.ment for a while, he wrapped it up and carefully bestowed it within the bosom of his shirt. The disappointment was general. The gleam faded from the faces of the boys. For several days, first one and then another was entrusted with the honourable custody of the missive. Whoever possessed it for the time being was the most favoured individual. His worthiness for the office he acknowledged with an amusing air of self-consciousness and pride. The transmission of a letter is not an ordinary occurrence, and though there is an entire absence of form and ceremony in its delivery, the rarity of the event lends to it novelty and importance.

Aboriginal letters are of great variety, and some there are who profess to interpret them. The despatches are, however, invariably, in my experience, transmitted from hand to hand, the news of the day being recapitulated at the same time. It is not essential that the unstudied cuts and scratches on wood should have any significance or be capable of intelligible rendering. Though blacks profess to be able to send messages by means of sticks alone, the pretension is not recognised by those who have crucially investigated it

On a certain station a youthful son of the proprietor was accidentally drowned in a creek not far from the homestead. The grief of the parents was partic.i.p.ated in by all engaged on the station, for the boy, full of promise, had been a general favourite. None seemed more sorrowful and gloomy than the blacks camped in the neighbourhood, and when the first shock of sorrow was of the past, they were eager to send the news to distant friends. A letter was laboriously composed. It was a short piece of wood, narrow and flat; an undulating groove ran from end to end on one side, midway was an intersecting notch. These were the princ.i.p.al characteristics, but there were other small marks and scratches. Bearing this as his credentials, a messenger departed, and in a week or so members of camps hundreds of miles away had seen the letter and were in possession of all the details of the sad event, the messenger in the meantime having returned. The letter was duly credited with having conveyed the particulars. Is it not obvious, however, that the news had been transmitted orally, and that the crude carvings on the stick merely indicated an attempt to give verisimilitude to the intelligence--the wavy line indicating the creek, and the notch the fatal waterhole. If not, then a black's message-stick is a model of literary condensation, their characters marvels of comprehensiveness and exact.i.tude.

Another letter is before me--one of the best specimens with regard to workmanship I have ever seen. Upon one edge of a piece of brown wood 6 inches long, 1 inch broad, flat and rounded off at the edges and ends, there are five notches, and on the opposite edge a single notch. Close to the end is a faint, crude representation of a broad arrow, below which is a confusion of small cuts, in a variety of angles, none quite vertical, some quite horizontal. On the reverse is a single--almost perpendicular--cut, and a bold X, and near the point, two shallow, indistinct diverging cuts. So far no one to whom the letter has been submitted has given a satisfactory reading. Blacks frankly admit that they do not understand it. They examine it curiously, and almost invariably remark--"Some fella mak' em." No attempt to decipher it is undertaken, because no doubt it was never intended to be read. Yet a plausible elucidation is at hand. The single notch, let it be said, represents a black who wishes to let five white fellows (who have made inquiries in that direction) know that a corrobboree is to begin before sundown, the setting sun being represented by the broad arrow, which seems to dip over the end of the stick. The guests are expected to bring rum to produce a bewildering, unsteady effect upon the whole camp--none, big or little, but will stagger about in all directions and finally lie down. On the other hand the guests are not to bring "one fella"

policeman with handcuffs (the cross), otherwise all will decamp--the two last are seen vanishing into s.p.a.ce. By a rare coincidence this very free interpretation could be made to apply to an actuality at the time the "letter" was received, but as a matter of fact it came from quite a different source to the black fellow who had engaged to let some students of the aboriginal character know when the next corrobboree would take place. It still remains undecipherable. My investigations do not support the theory that the blacks are capable of recording the simplest event by means of a system of so-called picture-writing, but rather that message-sticks have no meaning apart from verbal explanations. Blacks profess to be able to send messages which another may understand, but the tests applied locally invariably break down.

Another message-stick was made on the premises by George, but not to order. A genuine, unprompted natural effort, it is merely a slip of pine, 4 inches long, a quarter of an inch broad and flat, upon which are cut spiral intersecting grooves. George's birthplace is Cooktown, and his message-stick resembles in design that brought by Mattie from Bo'sun of Cooktown for Mickie of the Palms. Now George professes to be able to write English, but he is so shy and diffident over the accomplishment that neither persuasion nor offer of reward induces him to practise it. When he produced the "letter," more than usual interest was taken in it, for it seemed to offer an exceptional opportunity for ascertaining the extent of his literary pretensions. I asked him--"Who this for, George?" George looked at the stick long and curiously with a puzzled, concentrated expression, as one might a.s.sume when examining a novel and interesting problem demanding prompt solution. With an enlightening smile he in time replied--"This for Charlie."

"Charlie" is the name of a boy who recently visited the island, but who hitherto had not been known by George.

"Well, what this letter talk about?" A very long pause ensued during which George appeared to be putting his imaginative powers to frightful over-exertion. His forehead wrinkled, his lips twitched, his head moved this way and that, once or twice a gleam of inspiration pa.s.sed over his face, and then the expression of the deep and puzzled thinker came on again. Finally he said--"Y-e-e-s. Me tell 'em, sometimes me see Toby."

Toby is the tallest of the survivors of Dunk Island, another acquaintance of George's, who refers to him as a hard case, for it is said Toby's affections are very fitful and uncertain.

"Then that letter tell 'em something more?" The strenuous pause, the desperate plunge into thought again, and George continued--"This for Johnny Tritton, before alonga Cooktown; now walk about somewhere down here. Might be catch 'em alonga mainland!"

This message-stick was freshly made, and its meaning, had it possessed any, might have been repeated pat. But it was evident that the boy was putting a devastating strain upon an unexuberant and tardy wit when he endeavoured to ascribe to it a literary rendering. His hesitancy and contradictions were at least amusingly ingenuous.

Exceptional opportunities were available in this neighbourhood recently for the formation of an opinion upon the value of message-sticks for the transmission of intelligence. The bushman who on horseback carried His Majesty's mails inland among the settlers and to distant stations, was frequently also entrusted with the delivery of message-sticks by blacks along the route. Invariably the stick was accompanied by a verbal communication--a request for some article (a pipe, a knife, looking-gla.s.s, handkerchief) or an inquiry as to the whereabouts or welfare of some relative or friend. The mailman quickly found that the often elaborately graven stick was to no purpose whatever without the verbal message. Frequently the sticks would become far more hopelessly mixed up than the babes in PINAFORE; but as long as he recollected the message aright, not the slightest concern or dissatisfaction was manifested.

HOOKS OF PEARL

In this neighbourhood the making of pearl-sh.e.l.l fishhooks is one of the lost arts. The old men may tell how they used to be made, but are not able to afford any satisfactory practical demonstration. Therefore, to obtain absolutely authentic examples, it was necessary to indulge in the unwonted pastime of antiquarian research. During an unsystematic, unmethodical overhauling of the sh.e.l.l heap of an extensive kitchen midden--to apply a very dignified t.i.tle to a long deserted camp-- interesting testimony to the diligence and patience of the deceased occupants was obtained. It was evident that the sea had been largely drawn upon for supplies, if only on account of the many abortive and abandoned attempts at fishhooks in more or less advanced stages of completion. The brittleness of the fabric and the crudeness of the tools employed had evidently put the patience of the makers to severe task, who for one satisfactory hook must have contemplated many disappointments.

The art must be judged as critically by the exhibition of its failures as by its perfections, as Beau Nash did the tying of his cravats.

"Those are our failures," the spirits of the departed, brooding over the site of the camp, might have sighed, as we sorted out crude and unfashioned fragments. Presently the discovery of a small specimen established the standard of perfection--a crescent of pearl, which alone was ample recompense for the afternoon's research. Smaller than the average hook, it represented an excellent object-lesson in patience and skill. Many other examples, some complete, have since been found, and have been arranged for ill.u.s.tration to exhibit the process of construction in several stages. Do they not confirm the opinion that the maker of sh.e.l.l fish-hooks suffered many mishaps and disappointments, and that he had high courage in discarding any that evidenced a fault?

The method of manufacture was to reduce by chipping with a sharp-edged piece of quartz a portion of a black-lip mother-of-pearl sh.e.l.l to a disc.

A central hole was then chipped--not bored or drilled--with another tool of quartz. The hole was gradually enlarged by the use of a terminal of one of the staghorn corals (MADEPORA LAXA) until a ring had been formed.

Then a segment was cut away, leaving a rough crescent, which was ground down with coral files, and the ends sharpened by rubbing on smooth slate.

Discs were also cut out of gold-lip mother-of-pearl sh.e.l.l, but by what means there is no evidence to tell. When such a prize as a gold-lip sh.e.l.l was found, it was used to the last possible fragment. Most frequently the black-lip mother-of-pearl was the material whence the hooks were fashioned, and, when none other was available, the hammer oyster. In one case an unsuccessful endeavour had been made to fashion a hook from a piece of plate-gla.s.s, obtained, no doubt, from the wreck of some long-forgotten ship. The fractured disc lying among other relics of the handicraft spoke for itself.

Not only have many samples of partially-made hooks been found, but also the tools employed in the process. The sharp-edged fragment of quartz used to chip away the sh.e.l.l, the anvil of soft slate upon which the sh.e.l.l rested during the operation, the quartz chisel for chipping the central hole, the coral terminals, resembling rat-tail files, and the smooth stone upon which the rough edges of the hook were ground down and finished.

Hooks without barbs and manufactured of such materials as pearl-sh.e.l.l and tortoisesh.e.l.l may throw light upon the Homeric quotation "caught fish with the horn of the ox." In those far-off days, bronze wire rope, similar in design to the steel rope which is of common use in the present time, was employed. Ancient Greeks, though they antic.i.p.ated one of the necessities of trade nowadays, depended upon fish-hooks resembling those just being abandoned by the Australian blacks. Fish are guileless creatures. They are captured today with hooks of the style upon which fishermen of the Homeric age depended.

From the appearance of the camps, and the age of the islander who took part in the various searches, and who was ready to admit that though pearl-sh.e.l.l hooks were used when he was a piccaninny he had never seen one made, I judge the age of these relics of a prehistoric art to be between thirty and forty years.

This boy has supplied samples of hooks made by himself with the aid of files, etc., in imitation of the old style, being careful to explain that the old men made them much better than any one could in these degenerate days of steel. Two of these modern hooks bound to bark lines are ill.u.s.trated. What was the origin of the peculiar pattern of the pearl-sh.e.l.l fish-hooks? To this question, those who maintain that no handiwork of man exists which does not borrow from nature, or from something precedent to itself, may find a satisfactory answer offhand.

As it weathers on the beach, the basal valve of the commonest of the oysters, of these waters occasionally a.s.sumes a crude crescent. Indeed, several of these fragments have at odd times attracted attention, for they have so closely resembled pearl-sh.e.l.l hooks in the rough that second glances have been necessary to dispose of the illusion that they were actually rejects from some old-time camp. Is it not reasonable to suppose that the original design was copied from this elemental model, as, in like manner the boomerang is traceable to a leaf? The pattern is so profoundly persistent in the minds of the blacks of to-day, that in fashioning a hook from a piece of straight wire they invariably form a crescent, though the superiority of the shape approved by civilisation must have been exemplified to them times out of number. In this particular the blacks seem unconsciously to follow the idea of their ancestors as birds obey instinct in the building of nests and in migratory flights.

Piccaninnies at this date remind us of the genesis of the boomerang as they sport with the sickle-shaped leaves (or rather PHYLLODIA) of the ACACIA HOLOCARPA as with miniature boomerangs. The piccaninny of the remote past chuckled gleefully as the jerked leaf returned to it. As a boy he fashioned a larger and permanent toy, surrept.i.tiously using his father's stone tomahawk and sh.e.l.l knife, while the old man was after wallaby with a waddy. As a young man, hunting or fighting, he found his boyish toy a very effective missile. Even for a straight shot it had a longer range and far higher velocity, with less strength expenditure, than the waddy or nulla-nulla; and its homing flight had practical if not frequent uses. In his childhood, adolescence and maturity the black of to-day so graphically summarises a chapter in the history of his race that he who runs may read.

In the origin of the boomerang and the sh.e.l.l fish-hook we have instances, hardly to be doubted, of direct inspirations from Nature, proofs of the art and the infinite patience with which she sets her copies and expounds her texts.

WILD DYNAMITE

All the blacks of my acquaintance have had the rough edges of savagedom worn down. Consequently I lay no claim to original research or to the possession of any but common knowledge of the race at large. Learned societies and learned men have done and are doing all that is possible to acquire and acc.u.mulate information of the fast vanishing race. I merely record odd incidents, which may or may not prove useful and of interest, or which may bear repet.i.tion. An occasional gleam of satisfaction is vouchsafed even to casual and superficial students of human nature.

The supply of bait run out one day when we were fishing off the rocks with throw-lines. Mickie said--"We catch 'em plenty little fella fish with wild dynamite!" I asked him what he knew about dynamite. "Not white fella's dynamite. Wild dynamite--I show you."

Growing on the blistering rocks, with roots, down in the crevices, was a lowly vine, or rather a diffuse, creeping shrub with myrtle-like leaves and racemes of white flowers. "That fella wild dynamite," said Mickie, as he tore up several strands of the plant and bunched them, leaves and all, in his hand. He made a small bundle, and going to an isolated pool in the rocks in which were small fish he beat the leaves with a nulla-nulla, dipping the bruised ma.s.s frequently in the water. In a few minutes the fish were darting about erratically, apparently making frantic efforts to get out of the water. One by one they became stupefied and helpless, floating belly up. Mickie filled his hat with them, and as the soporific effects of the juice of the leaves pa.s.sed off, the remaining fish recovered and were soon swimming about again as if nothing had happened. Mickie had seen dynamite used to kill fish wholesale, hence his adaptation of the name of the plant known to him as "Paggarra," and to botanists as DERRIS SCANDENS.

Another method by which the blacks secure fish in pools left by the receding tide is to sc.r.a.pe off the inner bark of the "Koie-yan"

(FARADAYA SPLENDIDA) with a sh.e.l.l and spread it evenly on the bottom of a shallow pit in the sand, and place thereon stones made hot in the fire, or they may rub the powdered bark on hot stones. While still warm the stones are thrown into the water, when the fish become helpless.

They die if left in water so impregnated; while the effects of the DERRIS SCANDENS is merely temporarily soporific. How blacks became acquainted with this process of speedily extracting the toxic principle of the FARADAYA, and as speedily dissipating it, is unknown. One generation pa.s.ses on the knowledge to the other without explanation, and it is accepted as a matter of course, without comment or inquiry.

A CAVERN AND ITS LEGEND

Caves and caverns in the rocks and the tops of the mountains are not favourite resorts of blacks. According to them nearly every mountain has its mysterious lagoon, which none but old men have visited, but which teems with fish and waterfowl. When direct inquiries are made as to the precise locality of any particular lagoon, invariably inconclusive evidence is tendered. "Old man, he bin see 'em;" and, the old man is never forthcoming for cross-examination. The origin of the romance, no doubt, is to be attributed to the desire of the blacks to account to themselves for the water which glitters on the face of the rocks far up the mountains. One boy gave an exceptionally graphic description of a lagoon on the top of one of the highest peaks of Hinchinbrook Island, in which all manner of sea fish revelled. When doubt was expressed as to the possibility of sea-water and sea-fish getting up so far "on top" and it was suggested--"What you think, that old man humbug you?" "Yes,"

was the ready response; "me think that old fella no tell true. Him humbug." Some blacks possess something wiser than knowledge.

On the northern aspect of Dunk Island, where the sea swirls about the b.u.t.tresses of the hills, there is a cavern only approachable by boat. The mouth is overhung by vines and ferns, and through the moss which covers the lintel water trickles and splashes with pleasant sound. When the bronze orchid lavishly decorates the rocks with its crinkled flowers of dull gold, the entrance has a specific character; and quite another when the glossy leaves of the umbrella-tree form the relief and its long radiating spikes of dull red, bead-like flowers attract the brilliant sun-bird, and big blue and green and red b.u.t.terflies. Even when the sea is l.u.s.trous the cavern, with all the artfulness and grace of the decorations of its portals, is a black blotch--the entrance to something unknowable and unknown--at least to the blacks. None had ever ventured near it and they never will. They tell you how it came to be made. How a long, long time ago, a big man, "all a same debil-debil," took out with his mighty fingers a plug of rock and put it "on top alonga Hinchinbrook." Now the particular decapitated pinnacle of Hinchinbrook is 20 miles away, and out of all proportion. But these facts do not affect the legitimacy of the legend. There is the hole, and there on the top of the far-away mountain the prodigious plug demonstrative evidence too obvious to be set aside on any such plea as the eternal fitness of things. Is not the blue point of the mountain a defiantly triumphant fact? Is not the legend authenticated by tradition and confirmed by topography?

Why, therefore, doubt it for a moment?

And the hole--it goes a long, long way under the mountain. It is a bad place, a very bad place. No one has ever been there. Suppose any fella go inside, bi'mby that fella sick, bi'mby that fella die.

Braving all the honest traditions, one fine day I took a lantern in the boat and induced the boys to row to the entrance of the cave. Neither would venture in; indeed, they did all they could to dissuade me, protesting that evil was sure to befall. A minute's exploration showed that the cave did not extend 30 feet, and that it was dry, and resonant with "the whispering sound of the cool colonnade," with no suggestion of unwholesomeness or weirdness. But the blacks still pa.s.s it by. The legend is as indestructible as the odour of attar of roses. Although the boys persist in their account of the origin of the cave, it is known to them as "Coo-bee co-tan-you," which signifies "that hole made by the meteor," or, literally, "falling-star hole."

Romance, too, follows the Hinchinbrook pinnacle. Some local blacks regard it with awe, believing that it covers a deep hole in the mountain in which the winds and rain are pent up. When a malignant "debil-debil"

lifts the peak away the elements escape, roaring and hissing with anger and mischief. When tired, they retire sulkily to the hole, which the "debil-debil" blocks with the monstrous rock. Fine weather then prevails, and the rock, which has been hidden away among the mists by the fiend, becomes visible once more.

A SOULFUL DANCE

Of the many corrobborees that I have witnessed, the most novel in conception was performed on Dunk Island by blacks who came from the neighbourhood of Princess Charlotte Bay, some 200 miles to the north.