Crafts and
artifices, common enough a few years ago, are fast passing away. New
acquirements are generally saddening proofs of the unfitness of the
aboriginal for the battle of life when once his primitive condition is
disturbed by the wonder-working whites. Bent wire represents a cheap and
effective substitute for fish-hooks of pearl-shell, which cost so much
in skill and time, and ever so shabby and worn a blanket more
comfortable and to the purpose than the finest beaten out of the bark of
a fig-tree.
Many of the wants of the race are supplied through the agency of the
whites, and there are so many new tasks and occupations and novelties
generally to occupy attention, that the decent and often ingenious
handicrafts lapse and are lost. Our blacks still decorate rocks and the
bark of trees with rude charcoal drawings; but the art of making stone
axes is lost, though trees yet exhibit marks of those handled by the
fathers of the present generation.
In passing, an example of the difficulties that must inevitably be faced
by inquirers a few years hence who may seek information first hand may
be cited. The grandfathers of the blacks of Hinchinbrook Island and the
islands of Rockingham Bay have been popularly credited with the art of
making out-rigger canoes, such as were common a few miles to the north.
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