left nearly
dry at low water, or after a flood, and enclosing them in a net,
prepared by the women out of grassy fibres, and one of their greatest
efforts of ingenuity.[51] Nothing very remarkable is to be noticed in
these modes of fishing, except it be the speed with which they run along
the shore, and the certainty with which they aim their spears at the
inhabitants of the shallow bays and open lakes. As surely as the natives
disappear under the surface of the water, so surely will they reappear
with a fish writhing upon the point of their short spears; and even
under water their aim is always correct. One traveller, Sturt, is of
opinion that they seldom eat the finny tribes when they can get anything
else, but this idea seems scarcely to agree with the report of others.
At all events, whether from choice or not, a large proportion of their
subsistence is derived from the waters. With regard to the cookery of
their fish, the Australian barbarians are said to have a most admirable
method of dressing them, not unworthy of being copied by other nations.
If the fish are not simply broiled upon the fire, they are laid in a
piece of paper bark, which is wrapt round them, as paper is folded round
a cutlet; strings of grass are then wound tightly about the bark and
fish, which is slowly baked in heated sand, covered with hot ashes; when
it is sufficiently cooked, the bark is opened, and answers the purpose
of a dish; it is, of course, full of juice and gravy, not a drop of
which has escaped. The flavour of many sorts of fish thus dressed is
said to be delicious, and sometimes pieces of kangaroo and other meats
are cooked in the same manner.

[51] "Among the few specimens of art manufactured by the primitive
inhabitants of these wilds, none come so near our own as the net, which,
even in its quality, as well as in the mode of knotting, can scarcely
be distinguished from those made in Europe."--MITCHELL'S _Three
Expeditions_, vol. ii. p. 153.

The seal is exceedingly abundant on many parts of the Australian coast,
and is also useful to the natives for purposes of food, while the
pursuit of this creature is an exciting sport for the inhabitants of the
southern and western shores of New Holland. The animal must be surprised
upon the beach, or in the surf, or among the rocks that lie at no great
distance from the shore; and the natives delight in the pursuit,
clambering about the wild crags that encircle their own land