F
OR the purposes of our narrative we must turn back in our portfolio of Australian reminiscences, and present to our readers a sketch of an event that took place sixteen years previous to the date of the commencement of our story.
An August evening is sealing up in long red rows of clouds another day of the year of 1873. The scene before us is the heart of the weird “Never, Never Land,” so-called by the earliest pioneers from the small chance they anticipated, on reaching 86 it, of ever being able to return to southern civilization. Eight hundred miles in a direct line nor’-north-west from Sydney on the sea-board, and over fifteen hundred miles by the dreary ways a traveller must follow, the sand-hills, clay-paws, and low sandstone prominences of the district, now called the country of the Upper Mulligan, was still a terra incognita to Europeans on the aforementioned evening. It is true those ill-fated heroes, Burke and Wills, had passed through it twelve years before; but, poor fellows, they were hurrying southwards for the relief that came too late, and had no time to take much notice of the country. Night is coming on, with that gloamingless presumption that is mentioned as one of the oddities of the new land by most new chum visitors to tropic Australia, in their epistolary offerings to friends in the old country. The crimson clouds just above the horizon flash out brighter than before, as the sun sinks its lower edge behind the dim grey-blue line of dreary sand-hills. The earth grows darker suddenly, and the bosom of the piece of water in the foreground, is led and fringed with graceful lignum bushes, and backed by a picturesque outline of broken sandstone cliffs, becomes lighter by contrast as all else merges into purple shadows. Native companions (a large kind of crane) croak hoarsely high overhead, as they follow the sun westward, across the violet expanse of sky, to their feeding grounds by the salt lakes; large buzzards, called turkeys by the Australian settlers, come out to wrangle over grubs by the water’s side; mosquitoes rise in shrill-voiced, murmuring clouds to address the night-feeding fauna of the locality, vice swarms of persistent house-flies retired, the latter having now 87 festooned themselves in countless myriads upon the zigzag branches of the Gidea scrub around; dingoes are slinking by, like the guilty shadows of departed thieves, to the dark, slippery mud-pools, where the overflow of the water-hole (a small lake left in an intermittent river’s bed) has formed a broken, snake-haunted swamp; and all the life of the half-desert country around this part of the Parapee (now Mulligan) river gathers to enjoy the moisture, the comparative coolness, and the food-producing qualities of this Australian oasis.
Westward across the dreary salt pans, were we to follow the pelicans and native companions in their evening flight, we should find bitter lakes, with dazzling fringes of snowy salt, and strange—and, according to native legend, Cunmarie-haunted—mound springs. There, also, in the neighbourhood of the rocky Gnallan-a-gea Creek and sand-locked Eta-booka, we may find the wondrous Pitchurie plant (of the poisonous order of Solanacea). Growing here, and nowhere else in Australia (at the time we write of), the location of this valuable native drug, with its lanceolate leaves and white flowers,—that fires the warrior, soothes the sufferer, and inspires the orator,—was shrouded by the cunning protectionist inhabitants of the wilds with the grimiest, most mysterious surroundings their medicine men could possibly invent. Black boiling lakes, Cerberus-like portiers, half man, half emu, and devils of the most uncivil type were supposed by the natives of other districts to guard this sole source of revenue, in the shape of boomerangs and red ochre, of the Paree and Mudlow country.
Eastward a matter of twenty miles from the 88 water-hole are the castellated “spires and steeples” of a long range of flint-crowned sandstone hills, whose débris has covered the intervening country with an almost unbroken “dressing” of glaring yellow and red brown stones, or “gibbers.” If we were to follow the river bed southwards we should come upon magnificently grassed flats, now covered with the shorthorns of various squatter-kings.
On the sandy summit of a mass of brittle, broken sandstone, overlooking the water-hole, is the chief camp of the aboriginal inhabitants of the district. The father of this little hamlet—if we can honour the collection of beehive-like, mud-coiffured gunyahs by that name—belongs to the strong class-family, or totem, of the Mourkou (ignana-lizards); and, food being plentiful, enemies scarce, and no death-avenging troubles on hand, the little community is happy and contented on this winter evening, as the sun goes down. The smoke from the camp-fires curls up fearlessly from the tree-studded flat below the village, setting the More-Porks (night-jars of Australasia) coughing in the branches; and the peaceful though monotonous chants of infant-suckling mothers come with a soft lullaby murmur upon the ear. There is something very soothing about these native Yika-wimma (literally, milk songs), although we have heard them facetiously likened to the buzz of a meat-tin-imprisoned blow-fly; but, anyhow, their effect on a quiet evening like this is perfectly in sympathy with the spirit of the surroundings. Presently some twenty male natives, naked almost as the day they were born, collect round one of the fires, and proceed to discuss the merits of sundry lizards, fish, and 89 bandicoot which have been roasted on the embers. The menu also includes two varieties of potato-like roots,—Kylabra, a rather rare climbing plant, and that yellow-flowered “praty” of the interior, Tintina. The women sit patiently waiting for their turn to come, each watching her particular lord, much as a brown-eyed collie does his master, but scarcely ever ceasing their droning song. Now and then their patience is rewarded by a morsel being flung to them; and by-and-by, at a few words from the village-father—there is no real chief in these truly socialistic circles—the men gather round him to hold a consultation of some importance, the “ladies” immediately proceeding to do justice to what remains of the dinner. The men now gathered round the white-haired old native are mostly athletic-looking fellows, whose dark, naked skins, freshly polished with the fragrant fat—to an aboriginal’s olfactory ideas—of the ignana, shine in the firelight like the dark oaken carvings of saints in an Antwerp cathedral during midnight mass. The younger men and the boys (derrere), who keep at a respectful distance, and have eaten their meal apart from the fully-initiated males, are far from bad-looking as a rule. Ceaseless fun and joking, with occasional tale-telling, is going on amongst the youths; and presently they skip off into the shadows of the wurleys (huts) on the hill, where one of their number tells the oft-repeated native yarn of the “Crow and the Parula Pigeon,” amidst the shrieks of laughter of his delighted audience as they open their white-ivoried jaws in merriment at his imitations of the car-car, car-car, of the feathered rascal of the story.
The middle-aged men have the usual distinctive 90 characteristics of all Australian aborigines,—the slightly-made, calfless leg; the brilliantly-expressive yet bloodshot eyes; the short, flat, “tip-tilted” nose and strongly emphasized corrugator muscles of the forehead. They wear their hair generally in a matted collection of wiry curls, cut so as to fall round their heads in the modern high-art fashion; but some, having need of materials for fishing-net and line making, are cultivating their locks into cone-shaped elevations, by means of bands of grass. All of them stalk, rather than walk, as they move about, with long, from-the-hip strides that remind one of Harry Furniss’ caricatures of Irving. And what is particularly noticeable is, that the hunted-thief look one nearly always sees on the face of the average “station boy” (squatter’s aboriginal servant) is absent.
“What does the father of my mother’s sister, Pirruup, the clever sandpiper, think of these warnings, of these warnings?” chants one of the men, addressing the grey-haired patriarch, who sits a little apart from the rest, all being now squatting on their hams around the fire. “Shall Deder-re-re, of the duck-haunted Bindiacka water-hole, tell us once more of the strangers he saw, so that all may hear?”
Only two of the men have yet heard the important news brought by their red-ochre trader on his return home an hour before, so with the eagerness of children they wait open-eyed for the sage’s answer. Gazing heavenwards, where the stars are fast appearing at their brightest, the old man sits blinking his cunning old whiteless eyes, without apparently having heard the question. Upon his shrivelled, old, monkey-like features, lit by the fitful, dancing glare of the flames,91 nature has written a long history of privations, of weary trackings and watchings, and of savage battles. Yet there is something decidedly picturesque about him, and even admirable; for there is a certain air of dignity, command, and superior knowledge that makes itself manifest in all his movements.
After a somewhat lengthy silence, broken only by the laughter of the boys, and the distant, musical howling of far-off dingoes, the old man turns his head towards a young man, wearing the Yootchoo, or “string of barter,” and murmurs, “Yathamarow” (you may speak).
All the men present are busy plaiting hair, scraping the thigh-bones of emus for dagger-making, and the like; but they cease their work as their trader, who has the distinctive red-ochre marks upon his body that show his profession, begins to speak.
“Three are the moons that have broken, as the Nerre (lake-shells) break upon the wave-beaten shore, since I departed for the land of the Dieyerie, for the land of the Yarrawaurka. The sun is hot. The birds fly only in the shade. After two days water is needed by the man who carries a weight.” The speaker proceeds, in a roundabout way, to notify to his hearers that, partly through want of water and partly by fear, he had not cared to follow up a certain discovery he had made,—of approaching strangers.
“They travelled slowly,” he continued, gesticulating, and glancing round as his growing excitement fired the faces of his audience with reflected interest.
“Their heads were ornamented with the white moongarwooroo of mourning, but worn differently to ours. Their skin is covered with hair like the Thulka92 (native rodent), and they carry the fire-sticks of the southern people in their hands. Their women are large as sand-hills, and bent double with the weight of their loading,—their black hair sweeping the sand, and their resemblance to emus in the distance being great.”
We are bound to pause again, to explain that the natives of the interior have often told us they mistook the first-comers’ horses for their women, as they carried the packs, the females of a native party on the march always taking the part of porters. This will explain the ochre trader’s error.
A general conversation follows for a time, when the red-marked native cries,—
“Listen! I have learned a new Wonka (song).” Then commencing to mark time with his nodding head, and tapping an accompaniment with two carved boomerangs, he commences to chant the following verse:—
“Pooramana, oh poor fellows,
Oro Tora Tona, cooking,
In the embers savoury morsels,
Came the strangers, Plukman holo
Bum, Bum.”
An impromptu chorus here came in from all the men present of—
“Paramana, oh poor fellows,
Bum, Bum.”
With the ready appreciation of Australian aboriginals, all those present took in immediately the significance of the above words, and saw in them the singer’s wish93 to warn his brethren that the approaching strangers were of the same kind as those mentioned in his song. As, however, the difficulty of true translation and the obscureness of the meaning may puzzle our white readers and prevent them culling the poet’s idea, we will explain that the trader had, in these terse lines, pictured how some poor black fellows, having obtained some savoury morsels, were cooking the same over the fire, when the dreaded strangers surrounded and destroyed them by means of smoke-emitting fire-sticks, that made a great noise, the imitation of which formed the chorus of the song “Bum, Bum.”
There is a cessation of the song, and a feeling of insecurity saddens each face, for it is only before whites, and the natives of other and possibly hostile districts, that the stolid, expressionless physiognomy, sometimes mentioned as characteristic of the American Indian, is seen in Australian aborigines.
The old man has taken a plug of a tobacco-like compound from behind his ear and is chewing it, growing excited meanwhile. He is seeking for inspiration from a sort of hasheesh, formed of the dried and powdered leaves of the Pitchurie mixed with the ashes of the Montera plant.
The author of the didactic dialogues of Thebes, the old world expounder of some of the theories of modern psychology, if he could revisit the earth and wend his way to Central Australia, would there find some of his ideas, or rather the ghostly semblance of them, passable as religious coinage amongst the old men of the tribes. Grand old Cebes taught that man had a sort of life of apprenticeship before he entered upon this world’s stage, and could (if pure of heart) sometimes94 take counsel in times of perplexity by looking backward into his sinless anterior existence.
One of the virtues that the native drug Pitchurie is supposed to possess when used by the old men is the opening up of this past life, giving them the power and perquisites of seers.
To return to the old man and the camp. All the men watch him, waiting for him to speak. The boys, meanwhile, having tired of story-telling, are playing at Beringaroo over a large fire they have started. This game is performed with boat-like toys formed out of the leaf of the Aluja, warmed and pinched into shape. Flung upwards with a sharp twirl, imparted to it with the first and second fingers, concave side downwards, over the blazing fire, the plaything mounts with the draft, spinning rapidly, till it meets the cooler air, when it descends, only to mount again, still whirling in hawk-like circles. Shouts of applause reward the player whose toy keeps longest on the wing.
“Let the big fire be extinguished!” comes the word of command from the old man, uttered in a low voice. Then the speaker rises, and stretching out his arms towards the west, with the saliva caused by the chewing process running from his mouth upon his white beard and tawny chest, he commences to speak. The boys’ fire has been quickly subdued, and men, women, and children watch the figure of their “guide, philosopher, and friend.”
Slowly, at first, come the words; the old man’s voice growing louder and more excited towards the end of his speech, which is a kind of address to his patron-, or birth-star, in this case that of the Evening, or Lizard’s eye:—
95
“Amathooroocooroo, Star of approaching night, Kow-wah, thou risest, dilchiewurruna, from the sun’s camping-place.
“Boonkunana boolo, Thy shining head ornamented with gypsum,
“Is slowly ascending o’er Waieri, the sand-hills.
“Aumin thieamow, Remain and tell us, Purrurie, what see you, Ooyellala, beneath you?
“The red-ochre hunters, Wolkapurrie.
“The braves who have carried Murulyie, the red-ochre, hither, Wilchrena, are fearsome!”
Here the men and women burst in with a chorus of one word, dwelling on the last two syllables:—
“Muracherpū-nā, We are groping in the dark.”
The old singer continues:—
“Quiet is wathararkuna, the south wind; but gna-pou kouta,
“The noise of the waters reaches us.
“The ko-ning-chteri, the noisy gnats,
“Chaudachanduna kuriunia, are whispering over the spinifax (spiny grass).”
Chorus: “Muracherpū-nā.”
“Thou dancest as kintallo, the shrimp,
“As o’er Kuldrie, the salt-lake, thou risest.
“Kouta, the waves, koolkamuna, dance round you,
“Apoouna, Apoouna, bathing thy face.
“Murieami mungarina, farewell, thou silent one!
“Mungamarow mungara, let my soul speak!”
Chorus: “Mungamarow mungara!”
As the last vibrations of the chorus die away, the aged vocalist suddenly turns, and, filled with the spirit of prophecy, cries aloud in a different tone of voice, “The strangers are coming,” and then proceeds96 to march rapidly up and down beneath the Walke trees, his limbs quivering with excitement, and his staring eyeballs almost flashing with the wild madness of intoxication.
“I hear them crush the Yedede with their feet,” he howls. “No more shall our women gather the food-seed of Warrangaba.” Then stopping, and raising his arms, he continues in a lower tone: “High above my head soars the hawk Kerrek-i, laughing as he smells the slaughter.” Then mournfully, as he goes on with his promenade: “No more shall the emu seek the Nunyakaroo for its young ones. Both the Yeraga and Galga, will disappear from the land. What does Tounka, the crayfish, whisper in the waters of Palieu? Why does Mol-la, the crab, cry Kow-wah! come here! Kow-wah! come hither?”
The old man goes on marching and gesticulating, as he continues his prophetic lament; and the frightened boys, huddling together near the women, have ceased to laugh, and can hardly breathe with terror. The mothers hug their fat little offspring closer to their breasts, and dismay is pictured on all faces save that of the travelled bearer of the dreadful news. He had already owned to feeling timid, when two days since he found himself alone in the proximity of the dreaded white-faced devils from the south, of whose cruelty and far-reaching lightnings he had heard account on his travels. But he is with his friends and brethren now, he thinks, and besides, the new-comers will not arrive at the village yet awhile, perhaps not at all. The white-faced ones were not always victorious either; he had heard of a party of them, who had been on a slave-making expedition, 97 being attacked, and their prisoners rescued, at Congabulla Creek, to the south-east. To-morrow the signal fires could be lighted, and the whole tribe collected for a grand consultation upon the subject of the invaders. Three hundred braves could surely defy the handful of approaching Purdie (locusts). The Pulara (women who collect the braves and hunters together) should start at day break. Just as the thinker’s meditations gave birth to a more hopeful view of things, the old prophet of evil ends his harangue from sheer exhaustion, and sinks theatrically upon the sandy soil, lying there motionless in a state of coma.
Nearly every emergency produces its hero. Stepping forward into the open space before the other natives, bold-hearted Deder-re-re, of the red stripes, expresses aloud his hopes and plans, and winds up with a kind of nasal chant, that only a few of his audience—wonderful linguists as most of them are—can understand, as it is of southern origin, and in the language of the Warangesda tribe of New South Wales. The words have, as in most native songs, a hidden meaning,—a double entendre,—and in this case they are intended to illustrate the fact that a tribe is safest when its members are collected, or “rolled together,” much after the manner of the fable of the bundle of sticks. The song sung and explained has a visibly cheering effect upon all. At the risk of being tiresome, we place the words before our readers, with a fair translation of it, as another example of Australian aboriginal poetry:—
“Chūul’yu Will’ynu,
Wallaa gnor??
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Chill? binu? aa gna,
Kinūn?a gnūura? jeeaa
Chi?ba-a gnūtata.”
Chorus: “Kirr?girr?, kirr?girr? Leeaa gna.”
TRANSLATION.
“The porcupine has fiery spikes,
Burning like the fire-stick,
Surely some one is pinching me,
Softly, as a sister pinches her brother,
But I am safe, safe beyond danger
Grinning, grinning, grinning, are my teeth.”
The men now begin to discuss the matter in hand in a low voice, the old patriarch still lying upon the ground meanwhile; and a strange, wild group they form in the firelight, as they squat round in various attitudes. The women and boys now retire to the hut-crowned hill above the river flat. The heavenly peacefulness of the night scene, with the star-spangled sheet of water lying silent in its dark fringe of verdure; the purple dome above, pierced with the golden eyes of native deities; and the tremulous cries of various night-prowling birds and beasts, softened and sweetened by distance,—all seems in curious contrast to the anxious faces of the little community.
A woman wearing the Bilpa forehead ornament of kangaroo teeth is sitting at the door of one of the gunyahs on the hill, with a child in her arms. The hut, which is exactly like all the others in the group,—and for the matter of that all within two or three hundred miles,—is built of sticks, which have been stuck into the ground at the radius of a common centre, and then bent over so as to form an egg-shaped99 cage, which is substantially thatched on top and sides with herbage and mud. The door, on opening, faces the least windy quarter, namely, the north. Reclining against the portal is the satin-skinned native mother, who, dark as night, has the beautiful eyes, teeth, and hair of her race. She is gazing at the fat little man-animal on her lap by the light of an anti-mosquito fire-stick which she gracefully holds above her, and the group would form as beautiful a model as any artist could wish for to illustrate that affectionate adoration for their offspring which is the pleasing attribute of most mothers, civilized or uncivilized, all over the world. A slenderly formed boy, of about eight years of age, kneels by her side, amusing his baby brother with a toy boomerang that he has that day won as a prize, in the throwing game of Wu? Whuuitch , with his fellows. The woman is singing the chorus of the chant with which the villagers have that day welcomed the returning ochre trader, her husband:—
“Mulka-a-a-a-wora-a-a,
Yoong-arra-a-a Oondoo-o-o
Ya Pillie-e-e-e Mulka-a-a-a
Angienie,
Kooriekirra-a-a ya-a-aya.”
TRANSLATION.
“Put colour in the bags,
Close it all round,
And make the netted bag
All the colours of the rainbow.”
But leaving the peaceful village for a time, let us turn our mental night-glass towards a point four miles down the river’s course. Here the stream, having left100 the rocky, sandstone country, rushes its spasmodically flowing waters, from time to time, between banks of alluvial mud. A rank growth of various herbs, rushes, and fair-sized gum-trees has arisen here from the rich soil, whose fertile juices are more often replenished by the river than that farther afield. It is very dark below the branches; but if the meagre starlight could struggle in sufficient quantity between the pointed leaves, we should be able to see upon the water’s brim a strange mark in these solitudes, the footprint of a horse’s hoof,—the first of its kind that has ever refreshed its parched and grateful throat in the little billabong before us.
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CHAPTER IX. MURDER, MADNESS, AND MELODY.
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