k, in different styles, considered appropriate to dancing,
fighting, mourning, etc.

These people construct no huts except during the rainy season, when they
put up a rude and temporary structure of bark. Their utensils are few in
number, consisting merely of fine baskets of the stems of a rush-like
plant, and others of the base of the leaf of the Seaforthia palm, the
latter principally used for containing water. Formerly bark canoes were
in general use, but they are now completely superseded by others,
hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, which they procure ready-made from
the Malays, in exchange for tortoise-shell, and in return for assistance
in collecting trepang.

The aboriginal weapons are clubs and spears--of the latter the variety is
very great, there being at least fourteen distinct kinds. Their clubs are
three in number, made of the tough heavy wood called wallaru, a kind of
gumtree, the ironbark of New South Wales; one is cylindrical, four feet
long, tapering at each extremity; the other two, of similar length, are
compressed, with sharp edges--one narrow, the other about four inches in
greatest width, and resembling a cricket-bat in shape. These weapons on
account of their great weight are used only at close quarters, and are
never thrown like the waddy of New South Wales. The spears of the Port
Essington natives may be divided into two classes--first, those thrown
with the hand alone, and second, those propelled by the additional
powerful leverage afforded by the throwing-stick. The hand-spears are
made entirely of wood, generally the wallaroo, in one or two pieces,
plain at the point or variously toothed and barbed; a small light spear
of the latter description is sometimes thrown with a short cylindrical
stick ornamented at one end with a large bunch of twisted human hair. The
spears of the second class are shafted with reed. The smallest, which is
no bigger than an arrow, is propelled by a large flat and supple
throwing-stick to a great distance, but not with much precision. Of the
larger ones (from eight to twelve feet in length) the two most remarkable
are headed with a pointed, sharp-edged, flatly-triangular piece of quartz
or fine-grained basalt, procured from the mountains beyond the isthmus.
These large reed-shafted spears are thrown with a stiff flat
throwing-stick a yard long, and with pretty certain effect within sixty
paces.

ARTICLES OF FOOD.

The food of the aborigines consists chiefly of