AUSTRALIA'S BLACKS.

Shannon News, 4 December 1923, Page 3

AUSTRALIA'S BLACKS.

WONDERFUL SIGHT ANJ> MEMORY. A PROFESSOR'S TRIBUTE. The Australian black is too often judged by the degenerated examples that one sees meanly subsisting on what is doled out by the whites. But those who know them in their wild state have a very different story to tell of their self-reliance and mental capacity, and it is a revelation to hear the subject treated by men such as Professor Sir Baldwin Spencer, who is probably the greatest living authority on; the race. Writing in the " Adelaide Advertiser," he makes a spirited defence of the sturdy people whom he has made his special study. " We are accustomed,", he ; says,-" to regard ourselves as being'so superior to the aborigine that no comparison is possible. As a matter' of fact, the native is ar superior to us in many ways. He .has a wonderful sense of sight and memory. When he sees anything, whether it be• a .person, a tree, or eyenia rock; he never forgets it. He seems to be able at a glance to pick out the essential features that make one thing different from another. The first time I went up to the Northern Territory, there were about fifteen: in our party. We had two or three black boys with us, and one day two of us decided to go collecting animals in opposite directions, so as to cover as much ground as( possible. Each of us took a boy to help us, and, to my surprise, after we had been* out in the wild scrub for some time, my boy looked down and said, * That one nuther fellow been walk this way.' I asked him how he knewand found that, on returning to the camp that he had recognised not only the foot mark, but the particular shape of the shoe and was

Quite right as to who was its wearer. TRACKING FEATS. A little later I was again in the scrub collecting with the same boy and two others, when, suddenly, they came to a standstill, and after examining the hard ground became very excited. On asking them what was the matter they told me that there was an emu about with six young ones The three then separated, and began to track them up. They went at a trot the whole time. Not a word; was spoken but when the scrub was thin they communicated with each other by signs. After about two miles run, during which it was quite enough for me to do to keep up with them without looking out for tracks that I could not discern, they came to a halt. There in front of us,, was the mother emu and her six young ones. They are wonderfully observant in all kinds of ways, and not without a sense of humour. One member of our party had a small, bare smooth, rather glistening patch on the top of his head and was at once known privately among the natives as TJlder appa, Which means clay pan. They are wonderful at mimicking "anything that they think funny, and the action of two natives, one of whom tried' to show me how a former Government Resident of the Territory had behaved when he accidentally trod on a snake, and the other, who,.after posing a few natives for the purpose, imitated with three sticks for a tripod and a sheet of paper bark for the focussing cloth, the actions of an excitable photographer, was wonderfully realistic. Nothing amuses* them more than an accident which places one of them in an undignified or uncomfortable position. If a friend tumbles over a log or gives him self a good knock, they roar with laughter, and the chances are that he joins in. I anyone comes up who did not see it happen, he will be requested to do it again for the benefit of the new arrival, and the chances are that, he will cleerfully repeat the performance. ■."