Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1890-03-12
BARBER COUNTY INDEX
WEDNESDAY. MARCH II, 1890.
QUEENSLAND BLACKS.
A Race That Certainly Presents the Lo
IL


A Race That Certainly Presents the Low
est Type OF Humanity.
1t is impossible to imagine lower
type of humanity-whose lowest depths,
however, is to be seen only about the
inland villages of Queensland; for the
Queensland ''blackfellows" seem to pre-
sent the climax of native degradation.
The men are spare, wiry fellows, of .
Hull, iron-like blackness, which is
strangely set of by thick hair
and boards, having in them a de-
cidedly reddish cast of color-stolid,
impassive and slouchy; begging when
they have no money, and when they are
possessed of it drunk; filthy in dress and
appearance, their feet with soles like
horn from a lifetime of walking over
the hard, hot soil Of their semi-tropical
country. Accompanying them are their
women, fat, oleaginous, their foreheads
low, their eyes small and keenly gilt
tering under masses of banged" hair,
hollow-chested and with pendulous
breasts, their skin like parchment, and
in age wrinkled into appalling hideous-
ness-bearing on their backs, wrapped
in dirty shawls to apparent suffocation,
their children swathed like Indian
pappooses, and equally stolid, with
beady eyes, inexpensive either of pleas
ure or discomfort. These interesting
family groups are invariably attended
by half a dozen gaunt, half-starved
kangaroo dogs, mongrel progeny Of
many species, of which the traits of
mastif and of greyhound are most ap-
parent, their hides SCARED from en-
counters with the terrible claws of the
Kangaroo sneaking, Pariah race of
CANNES, which seems to have been
evolved for the express purpose of af-
fording appropriate companionship for
this most debased race of men. The
Australian blacks have no neighbors in
degradation among the tribes of the
South Pacific, even the Tasmanians,
whose last member died some twenty
years ago, were few degrees
above them, although evidently their
nearest relations The New Zealand
Maories are as far above them as the
ancient Romans were above the Goths
and barbarians; even the diabolical
man-eaters of New Guinea and the Solo
mon islands, in all the arts of building,
fashioning of utensils and weapons,
decoration of their houses, garments and
domestic vessels, present touches of in
genuity, thought and artistic instinct of
which the native Australian race gives
no hint whatever. Some suggestions
they afford, however, of an ancient in
telligence-the race that invented
the boomerang and the notched
stick for throwing the spear, are worthy
Of some respectful consideration.
This latter continuance is less we'll
known than the boomerang, but it is
hardly less ingenious. 1t consists of a
stick Of hard wood, about two feet in
length, with a projection at one end,
notched so as to receive the butt of a
long, slender spear. When the spear is
launched at any object the stick is re-
tanned in the hand, and, by a dextrous
movement, gives an added impulse to the
weapon, like that which a sling imparts
to stone. So great is the force given
by this continuance that spear (un-
tipped with metal or bone, as it is, and
consisting simply of a shaft of hard,
pointed wood) thrown by it has been
known to pass completely through the
OOAy VI al ~ VI
fifty yards. This aid to efficiency
in spear-thrOwing was evidently
the result of applied reasoning by
some ancient philosopher among the
'blackfellows" AS for the boomerang
that was probably discovered by acct
dent. Its shape is almost precisely that
of the eucalyptus leaf; nor can any one
who has sat under gum tree and seen
the whirling fight in which one of these
leaves settles to the ground in cratic
curves when dislodged from a lofty
bough, fail to remark the resemblance
of its movements to those of the boom
erang, and to see in it, at least, the pos
sible origin Of that paradoxical weapon.
Beyond these two appliances, the native
Australian race possesses nothing what
ever as evidence Of an intelligence much
superior to that of the brute.-BostoD
Innrna1