ate without
afterwards rinsing out their mouths, and sometimes munched up charcoal
to purify them. But the younger generation have discarded the
mouth-rinsing habit, and not yet attained to a tooth-brush: result,
gradual deterioration in teeth, a deterioration probably helped by the
drinking of hot liquids. Blacks of the old time drank nothing hot.
Perhaps, too, their tough meats gave muscular strength to their jaws.

To blacks, kissing is a 'white foolishness,' also handshaking; in olden
times even to smell a stranger was considered a risk.

CHAPTER XV

THE AMUSEMENTS OF BLACKS

A very favourite game of the old men was skipping--Brambahl, they
called it.

They had a long rope, a man at each end to swing it. When it is in full
swing in goes the skipper. After skipping in an ordinary way for a few
rounds, he begins the variations, which consist, amongst other things,
of his taking thorns out of his feet, digging as if for larv' of ants,
digging yams, grinding grass-seed, jumping like a frog, doing a sort of
cobbler's dance, striking an attitude as if looking for something in
the distance, running out, snatching up a child, and skipping with it
in his arms, or lying flat down on the ground, measuring his full
length in that position, rising and letting the rope slip under him;
the rope going the whole time, of course, never varying in pace nor
pausing for any of the variations.

The one who can most successfully vary the performance is victor. Old
men of over seventy seemed the best at skipping.

There is great excitement over Bubberah, or come-back boomerang
throwing.

Every candidate has a little fire, where, after having rubbed his
bubberah with charred grass and fat, he warms it, eyes it up and down
to see that it is true, then out he comes, weapon in hand. He looks at
the winning spot, and with a scientific flourish of his arm sends his
bubberah forth on its circular flight; you would think it was going
into the Beyond, when it curves round and comes gyrating back to the
given spot. Here again the old ones score.

Wungoolay is another old game.

A number of black fellows arm themselves with a number of spears, or
rather pointed sticks, between four and five feet long, called
widyu-widyu. Two men take the wungoolays, which are pieces of bark,
either squared or roughly rounded, about fifteen inches in diameter.
These men go about fifty yards from each other; first one and then
another throws the w