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t little Australian piccaninny I ever saw. It was not more than a few hours old, and so fat and jolly, with a little twinkle in its eye as much as to say, "I know all about you and you needn't come and look at me." Of course I expected to see a dear little shiny black baby as black as coal, but very much to my surprise it wasn't black at all. It was a very beautiful golden-brown, but as the mother said to me, "him soon come along black piccaninny all right." Under his eyes and on his arms and on other parts of his body were little jet black lines, and these gradually widened and spread till in a few weeks time he was a very deep chocolate colour, for though we call them "the blacks" the people of wild Australia are not really black but deep chocolate.

I am very sorry to tell you that many of the little piccaninnies who are born in Australia, especially if they happen to be girls, are not allowed to live at all. Perhaps the last little baby is still quite young and unable to help itself at all and so still needs all it's mother's care. Or perhaps there hasn't been any rain for many, many months and the grass has all withered and the water-holes have very nearly dried up, and there is very, very little food for anyone and the natives are beginning to think that it is never going to rain any more. In either of these cases the little baby is almost certain to be killed almost as soon as it is born, and perhaps, so scarce has food become, it may even be eaten by its parents and other members of the tribe.

There is another reason why babies are sometimes killed and eaten, and to us it seems a very horrible one indeed. Perhaps it is fat and healthy and there is some other and older child in the tribe who is weakly and thin. The natives will then sometimes kill the healthy baby and feed the weakly child on tiny portions of its flesh. It seems, as I said just now, very awful and very horrible, but the idea is this, that the strength and vigour of the younger child will be imparted to the weaker one.

It is the father who always decides whether the baby shall live or die. If it is allowed to live you must not imagine that it will be in any way neglected or ill-treated. Quite the opposite is true. There is no country in the world where babies and older children are spoiled quite so much as they are in wild Australia. They are never corrected or chastised by either father or mother, and they do just exactly as they like. Sometimes, perhaps, when father and mother are both away their maternal grandmother may happen to give them a good smack in the same way and on the same part as is usual in civilized countries, but this is certainly the only form of punishment they ever receive. They are everyone's idol and everyone's playthings, and yet they are never kissed, because no Australian aboriginal knows how to kiss. If a mother wants to show her love for her little one she will place her lips to his and then blow through them, and this is the nearest to kissing she ever gets. But baby crows with delight whenever mother does this.

Australian mothers never carry their piccaninnies in their arms as British mothers do, neither of course do they have any fine perambulators or mail-carts to push them out in. The most usual way of carrying them when they are quite tiny is in a bag of opossum skin or plant fibre slung on the mother's back. At night baby will very likely be put to sleep in a cradle made of a piece of bent bark perhaps sown up at the ends and covered with an opossum skin or a few green leaves. This is generally called a pitchi. As soon, however, as baby is able to hold on it seems to prefer to sit astride its mother's shoulder or hip and hang on by her hair.

There is one very curious custom among the blacks the "why" and "wherefore" no one has ever been quite able to explain. One of the things that would strike you most if you could look into the face of an aboriginal would be the great width of the nose. It sometimes extends almost across the face. It looks, if I may put it that way, almost as though it had been put on hot and before it had properly cooled had been accidentally sat upon. The reason is that when babies are quite tiny their mothers flatten their noses, but why they do this I cannot say. Probably a very broad nose is part of their idea of beauty.

It is always pretty to watch children at their play. You will remember how our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, like all child lovers, would often stand in the market place and watch the children playing. Sometimes they played weddings, sometimes funerals, and He once drew a lesson for the Jews from the conduct of those disagreeable and sulky children who would not join in. So it is a very pretty sight to see the little children of wild Australia playing. Like all other children they are very fond of games and grow very excited over them. Little girls may sometimes be seen sitting down and playing with little wooden dolls which a kind uncle or grandfather has made for them, whilst boys and girls alike will often play "Cat's Cradle" for quite a long time, and very wonderful and elaborate are the figures some of them contrive. Yet, like most other children, they like noisier games best. A kind of football is very popular, and they will often play it for hours at a time. Some one chosen to begin the game will take a ball of fibre or opossum or kangaroo skin and kick it into the air. The others all rush to get it and the one who secures it kicks it again with his instep. They get very excited over it and their fathers and big brothers sometimes get very excited too and come and join in, and the shouts and laughter grow until the very rocks begin to echo back their merriment.

At another time they will play "hide and seek" just as white children do, or a sort of "I spy." Another time perhaps a mock kangaroo hunt will engage them. One of them will be kangaroo and the others will hunt him. For a long time he will elude them, but at last he has to own himself captured and allow the hunters to dispatch him with their tiny spears. So, in one way or another, the merry days roll on until childhood's days are done and the education of the young savage, of which you will learn in a later chapter, begins to be taken in hand.

Often when the writer has watched the little black children at their play that beautiful promise in the prophets has come into his mind, "the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof." The prophet was thinking of the New Jerusalem and its happiness, and a great longing has come into the writer's mind for more men and women and children, too, to realize their duty to these forgotten children of the wild, and to take their part in bringing them into that heavenly city. Perhaps all those who read this little book will try what they can do.

"GREAT-GREAT-GREATEST-GRANDFATHER!"

Every little black piccaninny as soon as it is old enough to understand is told by its mother what sort of a spirit it has inside it, for the blackfellows all believe that their spirits have lived before and came in the very beginning out of some animal or plant. So some children have "kangaroo spirits," some "eagle spirits," some "emu spirits," and some, perhaps, the "spirit of the rain."

The mothers know exactly what kind of spirit each baby has. If it came to her in the kangaroo country then it has a kangaroo spirit and so on. In some parts it doesn't matter a bit what kind of a spirit father or mother may have. Father may have an emu spirit, mother an eagle hawk's, but if the baby came in the snakes' country it will have a snake's spirit.

Sometimes on the rocks in wild Australia you may see a rough picture of a kangaroo drawn by some native artist in coloured clays. It is a picture of the great-great-greatest-grandfather of the kangaroo men and so also, of course, of any little child who has a kangaroo spirit, because when he grows up he will belong to the kangaroo men. The story which he will be told about his great-great-greatest-grandfather will be something like this:--

"Ever so many moons ago" , "a great big kangaroo came up out of the earth at such and such a place and wandered about for a long time. After this he changed himself into a man and then he amused himself making spirits. Of course as he was a kangaroo man he could only make kangaroo spirits. These kangaroo spirits did not at all like having no bodies, so as they had none of their own they began to look about for other bodies to go into. So some went into kangaroos and some into little black children who happened to come in their country. Then one day great-great-greatest-grandfather called them all together--all the kangaroos and all the little children with kangaroo spirits--and told them that they all alike had kangaroo spirits and so were really brothers and must never eat or harm one another. And so to-day all the children with kangaroo spirits are taught to call the kangaroo their brother, and they will never eat or harm a kangaroo, and as you all know a kangaroo will never eat them."

If they have emu spirits they will never eat emu and so on.

The children are not told these stories by word of mouth as I have told you, but they are taught chiefly by means of corrobborees, or native dances, which you will read about later on.

When I saw a black man, as I did sometimes, who wouldn't eat iguana I knew at once that he belonged to the iguana totem group and had an iguana spirit; and, of course, his great-great-greatest-grandfather was not a kangaroo but an iguana.

Now that you have learnt in this chapter something of what the little black children of wild Australia are taught about where they came from and the sort of spirits which they have you will, I hope, want to do something to help to teach them the truth--that God made them all and that not the spirit of an animal or plant but a beautiful bright spirit fresh from God's own hand has been given them all, and that all have the same kind of spirit and those spirits when they leave the body will not wander about the earth again looking for some other body, but will "return to God Who gave them." They, just as much as we, are meant to live and enjoy God now and be happy with Him for ever hereafter.

FOOTNOTE:

I owe this title and something of the contents of the chapter to Mrs Aeneas Gunn's very interesting book for children, "Little Black Princess."

BLACKFELLOWS' "HOMES"

One of the first things of which a little child takes notice is its home. The pictures on the wall, the pretty things all around, the flowers in the garden are a source of ever-increasing delight to its growing consciousness. The older it grows the more it comes to know and love its home. Some of those who read this book will, perhaps, have very beautiful homes richly decked with all that art and money can supply, others will have smaller and plainer ones, but the children of wild Australia have scarcely anything that can be called a home at all.

A blackfellows' camp will consist of a number of the plainest and rudest huts that one can either imagine or describe. Sometimes there is not even a hut, but they live entirely in the open air on the bank of some creek or stream with merely a breakwind of boughs to keep off the wind and rain. During bad weather they will all huddle together as close to the breakwind as they can, whilst their limbs shake and their teeth chatter with cold.

More often, however, something in the way of a hut is made. A few pieces of stick, which will easily bend, will be driven into the ground, covered with sheets of bark and a few boughs and perhaps plastered over with mud. Sometimes, where kangaroos are plentiful, some dried skins will be used instead of bark and boughs. There will, of course, be nothing in the way of chairs or tables, a few skins and a pitchi or two will probably be the only furniture, but a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends will lie around. Some eight or nine souls may claim the hut as home.

These huts are arranged according to a fixed plan. Some will face in one direction, some in another. Thus a man's hut must never face in the same direction as that of his mother-in-law and certain other of his relatives.

A native camp always has a most untidy appearance. All kinds of things are left lying about, but as the black people are very honest nothing is ever stolen. They will give their things away freely but they will never think of taking what is not their own. Most of their time is spent out of doors. They only use their huts in wet and windy weather or when the nights are cold. Their food is always cooked and eaten outside, and bones and all kinds of remnants are littered about everywhere, but as they usually have several dogs these things do not remain for long. How thankful you and I ought to be for our homes and our home comforts, however plain and humble those homes may be!

If food is becoming scarce the people will often leave their camp altogether and migrate further up the river where it is more plentiful, for their camps, you must remember, are nearly always built upon a river's bank. Sometimes there may have been heavy rain in one part of their country and very little in another. Then they will move to where grass and game are more plentiful. We expect our food to be brought to our home, but the blacks take their homes to their food. Sometimes after a death, too, they will desert their settlement and encamp elsewhere. The dead man may have been a very troublesome person to get on with when alive, and they think if they bury him near his old camp and then move away themselves his ghost will not know where to find them and they will be rid of him altogether. This frequent moving of their homes is in many ways a very good thing. If they stayed too long in one place their huts would soon become very insanitary and diseases would begin to work havoc among them.

In the camp the old man's word is law. They even decide what food may be eaten and what must be left alone. They manage to forbid all the more delicate morsels to all the younger members of the tribe and so secure the best of everything for themselves. Women and girls are of little account among them. They are in fact but the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for the men, and their life is one of terrible and never-ending drudgery. The little girls, of course, do not have to work, but they are seldom made such pets of as are the little boys. At fourteen they are girls no longer and their life of drudgery begins.

Such are the marriage ceremonies in wild Australia.

EDUCATION

There are no schools in wild Australia, yet it must not be thought that the children receive no education. On the contrary their education begins at a very early age and is continued well into manhood and womanhood. Up to the age of seven or eight boys and girls play together and remain under their mother's care, but a separation then takes place and schooldays, if we may call them by that name, begin. The boys leave the society of the girls and sleep in the bachelor's camp. They begin to accompany their fathers on long tramps abroad. They are taught the names and qualities of the different plants and animals which they see, and the laws and legends of their tribe. Lessons of reverence and obedience to their elders are instilled into their young minds, and they have impressed upon them that they must never attempt to set up their own will against the superior will of the tribe. They are taught to use their eyes, and to take note of the footprints of the different animals and birds, and eventually to track them to their haunts. In this art of tracking many of them become wonderfully skilled. They will often say how long it is since a certain track was made, and in the case of a human foot-mark will often tell whose it is. They will say whether the traveller was a man or a woman, and in some cases have been known to say, quite correctly, that the man was knock-kneed or slightly lame. Trackers employed by the police have often traced a man's footsteps over stony and rocky ground, being able to tell, from the displacing of a stone here and there, that the man whom they were seeking had passed that way. On one occasion a clergyman was travelling in the bush when he was met by an aboriginal boy who told him that a man had gone along that way earlier in the day, had been thrown from his horse about five miles further on but had not been hurt very much because he had got up after a few minutes and had gone after his horse; the man, however, was slightly lame, and the horse had cast a shoe. The same evening the clergyman met the man in question and found that the native's account of what happened was correct in every detail. He had gained his information entirely from careful observation of the tracks.

So wonderfully is this power of seeing trained that every object is most carefully noted as it is passed. The foot-marks of an emu or kangaroo on their way to water, the head of a wild turkey standing above the grass some two hundreds yards away, will be pointed out to the purblind white man who has never learned to see. If one of the lessons of life is to use the eyes the aboriginal teacher teaches his lessons well.

The children of wild Australia are taught to use their ears. They will start up at the first faint stirring of the leaves which tells that a storm of wind will soon be down upon them or that an opossum or parrot is awakening in the tree. Their ears, too, will notice the slight rustling of the grass and the stealthy footsteps on the ground which tell that some enemy is near. It takes long and careful training to bring the power of hearing to such perfection as this.

They are taught to use their hands and to make and use the weapons, etc., of which you will read in the next chapter. What wonderful natural history lessons, too, theirs must be. The habits of all the various animals are learned out in the wild, and numerous stories about them are told. The traditions of all the places they come to are carefully narrated by the older men, and in this way a faithful adherence to the rules and customs of the tribe is ensured. Wonderful are the tales of their old ancestors which will be narrated around the camp fires at night, whilst in the day time excursions to some of the sacred spots, whose legends were told over night, may be made. So in one way or another a remarkable reverence for antiquity--for the dim and shadowy heroes of the "alcheringa," or distant dream age in which these old heroes lived, and for the aged will be instilled and the children grow up in ways of reverence and obedience which are often sadly lacking in more favoured lands.

Sometimes the growing lad at about the age of twelve or thirteen will be sent away to school, that is he will go to stay with some neighbouring friendly tribe whose old men will carefully complete the education which his father and the men of his own tribe began.

But lessons are taught not only by word of mouth but by means of sacred rites which the young lad at about the age of fourteen is allowed to witness for the first time. In these sacred performances the deeds of some doughty ancestor are portrayed, and the boy as he gazes upon them, and listens to the answers given to the questions he is allowed to ask, learns more and more of the rules and traditions of his tribe. No women and children are ever allowed to be present at these solemnities. The tribal secrets which they depict may be known only to the men. A woman or girl who dared to venture near or pry into them would have her eyes put out or be killed at once by the men.

Before the young lad can be allowed to attend he needs to be solemnly initiated into his tribe. He is taken away into the bush and there undergoes a kind of savage Confirmation. A front tooth is knocked out, and the body is gashed with sharp stones. In some tribes a new gash is given as each new secret is imparted. Into the wounds thus made ashes or the down of the eagle hawk are rubbed to make the wound heal. The actual result is a raised scar which lasts on through life.

Sometimes what is called a Fire Ceremony is also performed to test the power of endurance of those who are henceforth to be regarded as men. A large fire is lighted and then the hot embers are strewn on the ground. Over these a few green boughs are placed and the boys are made to lie down upon them until permission is given them by their elders to rise. The boughs, of course, keep them from being actually burned, but the heat of the fire is very great and they are often nearly suffocated with the smoke. Should the faintest cry escape one of them or should they fail to lie perfectly still they would be regarded as weak and effeminate and unworthy to be "made men," and their admission into the full privileges of the tribe would be delayed. These fire ceremonies are a very severe test of their power of endurance. The native lad will suffer a great deal rather than be thought soft and womanish, and there are few who fail to stand the severe test which is here demanded of them.

WEAPONS, ETC., WHICH CHILDREN LEARN TO MAKE AND USE

The people of wild Australia are still in what is called "the stone age," which means that all their tools and weapons are made of wood or stone. Those on the sheep stations and near the towns are, however, learning to use tin and iron, but it is not natural for them to do so.

The first tool they learn to use is a little digging stick. Almost as soon as they are able to run alone one of these little instruments will be put into their hands and they will be shown how to use it. With these they learn very quickly how to dig for grubs and edible roots, and as they get a little older they may be seen making little "humpies" of sand. But the most wonderful of all their weapons is the boomerang. No other people in the world is known to use it though some have thought that it was once in use among the very ancient Egyptians. There is a very interesting theory as to the origin of the boomerang. Some children, it is said, were playing one day with the leaf of a white gum tree. As the leaves of this tree fall to the ground they go round and round, and if thrown forward with a quick jerk they make a curve and come back. An old man was watching them playing, and to please them he made a model of the leaf in wood. This was improved upon from time to time until it developed into the boomerang.

Boomerangs proper are usually about twenty-four inches long, but there are seldom two of exactly the same size and pattern. They are rather more curved on the under than on the upper side. A man or boy who wants to throw one of them first examines it very carefully and then takes equally careful notice of the direction of the wind. He then throws it straight forward giving it a very sharp twist as he throws. At first it will keep fairly close to the ground, then after it has gone a certain distance it will turn over and at the same time rise in the air. Completing its outward flight, and perhaps hitting the object at which it was aimed, it turns over again and comes back to within a few feet of the man who threw it. Boys may often be seen practising for hours at a time with their little toy boomerangs, and by the time they are men many of them have become very proficient in throwing them.

A skilful thrower can do almost anything he likes with his boomerang. A native has been seen to knock a stone off the top of a post fifty yards away, but very few of them are quite as clever as this. None the less it would be rather dangerous for an unwary spectator to watch a party of native men and boys throwing their boomerangs. An enemy or a hunted animal hiding behind a tree would be quite safe from a spear or bullet but could easily be taken in the rear and seriously injured by one of these extraordinary weapons when thrown by a skilful thrower. Kangaroos and emus find it almost impossible to avoid them whilst they work the most amazing havoc among a number of ducks or cockatoos just rising from water, or even among a flock of parrots on the wing. Many a supper has an aboriginal boy brought home with the aid of his trusty boomerang.

While the men and boys are hard at work making these different implements the women and girls very likely busy themselves manufacturing bags and baskets. The baskets are made of thin twigs and the bags with string spun from the fibre of a coarse grass called spinifex, or perhaps from animal fur. In them they contrive to carry all their worldly goods as they travel from camp to camp, and occasionally baby also is safely stowed away in the same receptacle.

HOW FOOD IS CAUGHT AND COOKED

In very few parts of wild Australia can the black people count on a regular supply of food. Sometimes there is no rain for months, and consequently the grass disappears, water dries up, and many of the animals die. In these times of drought the conditions of the people are pitiable indeed.

The chief articles of diet besides seeds and roots are fish of various kinds--kangaroo, emu, lizards, snake, wild turkey or bustard, parrots and cockatoos, insects and grubs. Vermin, too, are sometimes eaten, and clay is occasionally indulged in as dessert.

There are many ways of catching fish. The commonest method is by means of a spear. A native boy may often be seen standing on a rock in the middle of a pool, or by the water's edge, with a spear in his hand, his eyes intently fixed upon the water. As soon as a fish comes near down goes the spear and it is seldom that he fails to land his prey. In some parts rough canoes of bark are made and the fishing will be done from these. Sometimes the fish are poisoned by pouring the juices from some poison plant into the water but this method is not very often employed.

Their method of catching crayfish is not one that you and I would care to employ. They will walk about in the water and allow the fish to fasten on their toes, but so extraordinarily quick are they that they will stoop down and crush the creature's claws with their own fingers before it has had time to nip.

Even more varied than their ways of fishing are their methods of catching birds. A black boy may sometimes be seen stretched naked and motionless on a bare rock with a piece of fish in his fingers. When a bird comes to sample the fish he will with his disengaged hand, catch it by the leg. Parrots and cockatoos are often caught by means of the boomerang, but the native will sometimes employ quite another method. He will get into a tree at night, tie himself to a branch, and take with him a big stick. As the birds fly past him he will lash out with his stick and bring large numbers of them to the ground. Emus are far too powerful to be caught in any of these ways. They are usually taken in nets as they come in the early morning to water. A number of natives will hide themselves in bushes or behind rocks and when the emus have gathered at the water-hole will steal out almost noiselessly and stretch large nets on three sides of a square behind them. The birds on returning from the pool walk straight into the nets and are easily speared.

Kangaroos are sometimes captured in the same way, but more frequently they are killed with spears. A native has been known to walk very many miles stalking a kangaroo. A case is even on record where a man spent three days in capturing one. When the kangaroo ran he ran, when it stood he stood, when it slept he slept, and so on till at last he was enabled to creep up sufficiently closely to dispatch it with his spear.

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