e always remained inviolable, unless
effaced by resentment, from sudden provocation: then, like all other
Indians, the impulse of the moment is alone regarded by them.

[*This may serve to account for the contradictions of many of their
accounts to us.]

Some of their manufactures display ingenuity, when the rude tools with
which they work, and their celerity of execution are considered. The
canoes, fish-gigs, swords, shields, spears, throwing sticks, clubs,
and hatchets, are made by the men. To the women are committed the
fishing-lines, hooks and nets. As very ample collections of all these
articles are to be found in many museums in England, I shall only briefly
describe the way in which the most remarkable of them are made. The
fish-gigs and spears are commonly (but not universally) made of the long
spiral shoot which arises from the top of the yellow gum-tree, and bears
the flower. The former have several prongs, barbed with the bone of
kangaroo. The latter are sometimes barbed with the same substance, or with
the prickle of the sting-ray, or with stone or hardened gum, and sometimes
simply pointed. Dexterity in throwing and parrying the spear is considered
as the highest acquirement. The children of both sexes practice from the
time that they are able to throw a rush; their first essay. It forms their
constant recreation. They afterwards heave at each other with pointed
twigs. He who acts on the defensive holds a piece of new soft bark in the
left hand, to represent a shield, in which he receives the darts of the
assailant, the points sticking in it. Now commences his turn. He extracts
the twigs and darts them back at the first thrower, who catches them
similarly. In warding off the spear they never present their front, but
always turn their side, their head at the same time just clear of the
shield, to watch the flight of the weapon; and the body covered. If a spear
drop from them when thus engaged, they do not stoop to pick it up, but hook
it between the toes and so lift it until it meet the hand. Thus the eye is
never diverted from its object, the foe. If they wish to break a spear or
any wooden substance, they lay it not across the thigh or the body, but
upon the head, and press down the ends until it snap. Their shields are
of two sorts. That called 'illemon' is nothing but a piece of bark with
a handle fixed in the inside of it. The other, dug out of solid wood, is
called 'aragoon', and is made as follows, wi