Human Bloodhounds.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 April 1922, Page 4

Human Bloodhounds.

(By Albert Don mgton.)

The achievements of the Australia ll |,lack police, trained to police work and attached to the district Superintem. ’ dent’s staff, ate without partdleh The trail work of the old red Indian reads like child’s phiy when compared with the exploits of, the Queensland black trackers. Nature has endowed them with the bloodhound’s instinct combined with a superhuman s ense of observation. The hunted desperado may cross auriferous sandstone country where the print of a foot, would appear impossible. A’et the black tracker will follow in the desperado’s step with scarcely a glance at the ground as he canters on bis well-groomed horse in front of the white troopers.

Often lie will draw rein to indicate where an article such ns. a pipe, match, cap or jack-knife has been allowed to fall to tiie ground by the escaping ties perado, and recovered I have seen a black fellow follow the trail of a lizard or iguana across a strip of basalt country, catch, cook and eat it within ail hour.

And the trail of a lizard or basalt lias got most white men guessing even with a microscope.. As piccaninnies in their native “whirlies” or ‘•humpies” the black babies, a Making from sleep at dawn, will sometimes discover that their mother lias disappeared. drawing from the ‘‘humpy.” they will often track the mother to some distant watorholc or lagoon, t'arougn scrub and sniuii* x that no while child could endure. And so the instinct of the wilds is developed. Hornet hues the black tracker turns cri minnl and is himself tracked. 4 hen tke fun begins, and all the tricks in the aboriginal calendar are introduced’ to lwart the pursuers. The pursued black fellow lias been known to run hack wards for miles, dusting and obliterating his tracks with a loaly tree branch :u he ran. Rut;, the professional tracker in his wake lias become aware ol this i:i<• t.

and kes haggml his quarry tree, branch :inj i'll, at 1 he end of a 50-miles run!

Turning a horse's shoes is too old a dodge to deei 've an aboriginal, hut the white crimm-d lias often puzzled him tv clambering along a wire sheep leneo for ten or twenty miles. Hard work in. a sweltering sun, hut liberty is sweet.

Rill Redway, the original Captain Ht a: light of | to lie Boldrcwood’s “Ron.

bery Under Arms,” told the writer that lie once beat the black police by climbiug into a barrel and rolling across tho plains. The trackers found the haiqel near ilea mi la on the Darling, but B'H by that time was sitting on another, inside, a ••pub” across the Queensland border.