Australian Aborigines.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 4 September 1914, Page 8

Australian Aborigines.

The Australian Aborigines (says

Bishop Frodshain in ' "The Cornhill Magazine) have considerable dramatic instinct, and their dances are extremely interesting -and varied. One favourite dance, probably connected with a basic principle of life, is wearisome I.eyond measure to the white eye, but this is not the case with corroborees illustrative of life in the bush. One such dance, I have seen, portrayed a turtle hunt—in which the turtle lifting its head above the water seemed possessed with the spirit of elusive humour. In another favourite dance the young men of the tribe mimicked a tribe dingoes quarrelling over the imaginary carcase of a kangaroo.. This dance, I remember, once ended ,in peals of laughter, as two of the naked players, fighting like angry dogs oA'er a real bone, rolled together into the burning wood-ashes of the camp fire.

The last dramatic corroboree 1 saw was descriptive of three Chinese squabbling together over a gun. The manners of the imaginary disputants and their labial language sounds were reproduced with inimitable fidelity. Stealthily the tribesmen crept through the long grass upon .the noisy Celestials and their approach vividly reminded me of a cat stalking with tense muscles and deadly intentness the nil! of paper which it was pleased to pretend was a bird. The attack when made was certainly feline in its overwhelming suddenness, and, the slaying done, the tribesmen crept back quietly into the bush carrying with them, the stolen gun.

Later came some police troopers blundering upon the scene. These examined with much detail and portentous solemnity the murdered Chinamen. The sibilant sounds of the English language—without words —were copied with equal fidelity by the players. But an unexpected finale was reached when the Celestials proved not to be dead at all. Instead they sprang up, overturned the policemen, and ran away howling into outer darkness. The climax was received with shouts of laughter.. Yet not one present could tell me anything of the incident to which the dance obviously referred. The observation of detail is remarkable. I myself have not escaped. A somewhat ridiculous incident connected withjmy landing from a boat was reproduced as a dance—in which my manner of walking and my voice were copied with laughable faithfulness.