Though blacks profess to be able to send
messages by means of sticks alone, the pretension is not recognised by
those who have crucially investigated it
On a certain station a youthful son of the proprietor was accidentally
drowned in a creek not far from the homestead. The grief of the parents
was participated in by all engaged on the station, for the boy, full of
promise, had been a general favourite. None seemed more sorrowful and
gloomy than the blacks camped in the neighbourhood, and when the first
shock of sorrow was of the past, they were eager to send the news to
distant friends. A letter was laboriously composed. It was a short piece
of wood, narrow and flat; an undulating groove ran from end to end on
one side, midway was an intersecting notch. These were the principal
characteristics, but there were other small marks and scratches. Bearing
this as his credentials, a messenger departed, and in a week or so
members of camps hundreds of miles away had seen the letter and were in
possession of all the details of the sad event, the messenger in the
meantime having returned. The letter was duly credited with having
conveyed the particulars.
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