SMOKE SIGNALS

It is many years since a black boy at Port Darwin remarked casually to his master, a Government official there, “Steamer him come on; him sit down lame fella,” and began to limp across the room.  He said that the steamer was a long way away; but “blackfella he make ’em smoke; blackfella bin tell ’em.”

Four days after the steamer Guthrie slowly entered the port with her machinery badly disabled.

THUNDER FACTORY

A boy who had visited towns, listening intently to a reverberating peal of thunder asked—­“How make ’em that row, Boss?  He got big wheel?”

Home keeping blacks have homely wits.  Having no experience of the rumble and rattle of traffic they ascribe to thunder a mysterious origin, and indicate though with reserve, the very place where it is made.  The swirl of a creek in the mainland has excavated a circular water hole in a soft rock, brick red in colour.  This hole is the local thunder factory, and the blacks were wont to hang fish hooks across it from pieces of lawyer cane, with the idea of ensnaring the young thunder before it had the chance of becoming big and formidable.

THE ORACLE

Divination by means of the intestines of animals is practised by the blacks in some parts of North Queensland.  A young gin died suddenly on the lower Johnstone River.  Immediately after, the young men of the camp went out hunting, bringing back a wallaby.  The entrails were removed, and an old woman—­the Atropos of the camp—­stretched them between her fingers in half-yard lengths, simultaneously pronouncing the title of a tribe in the district.  The tribe, the name of which was being uttered as the gut parted, was denounced as the source of the witchcraft which had occasioned the untimely death of the gin.  Vengeance followed as a matter of course.

A REAL LETTER

Sam, a boy living in the Russell River scrub, spoke thus to his master:—­

“One fella boy, Dick, he come up fight along me four days.”

“How you know, Sam?” asked the boss.

“Dick, he bin make ’em this one letter,” replied Sam, picking up a palm leaf from which all the leaflets save seven, had been torn.  Three of the seven had been turned down at the terminal point, and Sam continued his explanation.  “He no come Monday, he no come Tuesday, he no come Wednesday, he come Thursday,” indicating the first upright leaflet.

Sam said that he had an outstanding quarrel with Dick and had expected the challenge conveyed by the letter he had picked up on the track that morning.

When Thursday came Dick appeared well armed, and the two had an earnest, honourable and exhilarating combat and parted good friends.

A BLACK DEGENERATE