North Queensland Ethnography, Volumes 1-8Government Print, 1901 - Aboriginal Australians |
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Common terms and phrases
aboriginals animal Atherton bark basal strand birds blacks Bloomfield River boomerang Boulia district Brisbane camp Cape Bedford Cape Grafton celt Cloncurry colour continuous strand Cooktown dilly-bags eaten raw edge employed Endeavour River extremity feet fibre-twine Ficus fire fish fixed flake Georgina River girl grass gura hand Hislop hunting implement inches incisions individual Kalkadun kangaroo Keppel Island latter lawyer-cane legs length loop lower Tully River M.-Fruit mangani manufactured Mapoon medicine-man mother mouth ngayu North Queensland Nouns nulu nundu obtained opossum Palmer River Pennefather River person piece pigment Pitta-Pitta portion Princess Charlotte Bay Proserpine River Queensland recognised removed River natives roasted ROTH round scraper sect shell side similar spear split stick stone string suffix surface tea-tree throw tree tribe trough Tully River twine verb water-hole woman women wommera
Popular passages
Page 12 - For the next ]0ft. there is a horizontal stratum of black schistose rock, which was of so soft a consistence that the weather had excavated several tiers of galleries, upon the roof and sides of which some curious drawings were observed, which deserve to be particularly described. They were executed upon a ground of red ochre, rubbed on the black schistus, and were delineated by dots of a white argillaceous earth, which had been worked up into a paste.
Page 19 - By turning the latter round to the right or to the left, as the case may be...
Page 12 - They represented tolerable figures of sharks, porpoises, turtles, lizards, (of which I taw several small ones among the rocks,) trepang, star-fish, clubs, canoes, water-gourds, and some quadrupeds, which were probably intended to represent kangaroos and dogs. The figures, besides being outlined by the dots, were decorated all over with the same pigment in dotted transverse belts.
Page 8 - South sea, far excel most of the Americans in the knowledge and practice of the arts of ingenuity, and yet they had not invented any method of boiling water ; and having no vessel that would bear the fire, they had no more idea that water could be made hot, than that it could be made solid.
Page 9 - ... felled and fashioned, we had no opportunity to learn. The only tools that we saw among them are an adze, wretchedly made of stone, some small pieces of the same substance in form of a wedge, a wooden mallet, and some shells and fragments of coral. For polishing their throwing-sticks, and the points of their lances, they use the leaves of a kind of wild fig-tree, which bites upon wood almost as keenly as the shave-grass of Europe, which is used by our joiners...
Page 20 - Eoxburgh and Glenormiston, at both of which localities it appeared at the end of 1894, and so to Herbert Downs and Boulia, where it arrived in 1895. From Boulia, it travelled on the one hand, via Marion Downs down the Georgina, making for the Lower Diamantina, and, on the other, via Springvale for the "Gates," Davenport, and Cork on the Middle Diamantina, where it was met with at the beginning of 1896.
Page 12 - As this is the first specimen of Australian taste in the fine arts that we have detected in these voyages, it became me to make a particular observation thereon : Captain Flinders had discovered figures on Chasm Island, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, formed with a burnt stick ; but this performance, exceeding a hundred and fifty figures, which must have occupied much time, appears at least to be one step nearer refinement than those simply executed with a piece of charred wood.
Page 10 - They produce fire with great facility, and spread it in a wonderful manner. To produce it they take two pieces of dry soft wood, one is a stick about eight or nine inches long, the other piece is flat : the stick they shape into an obtuse point at one end, and pressing it upon the other, turn it nimbly by holding it between both their hands &s we do a chocolate mill, often shifting their hands up, and then moving them down upon it, to increase the pressure as much as possible.
Page 22 - A woman begets children because (a) she has been sitting over the fire on which she has roasted a particular species of black bream, which must have been given to her by the prospective father, (b) she has purposely gone a-hunting and caught a certain kind of bullfrog, (c) some man may have told her to be in an interesting condition, or (d) she may dream of having a child put inside her.
Page 23 - when it is remembered that as a rule in all these Northern tribes a little girl may be given to and will live with her spouse as wife long before she reaches the stage of puberty — the relationship of which to fecundity is not recognised — the idea of conception not being necessarily due to sexual connection becomes partly intelligible.