Description
The Stone Axe Of Burkamukk
I
THE STONE AXE OF BURKAMUKK
CHAPTER I
The camp lay calm and peaceful under the spring sunlight. Burkamukk,
the chief, had chosen its place well: the wurleys were built in a green
glade well shaded with blackwood and boobyalla trees, and with a soft
thick carpet of grass, on which the black babies loved to roll. Not a
hundred yards away flowed a wide creek; a creek so excellent that it
fed a swamp a little farther on. The blacks loved to be near a swamp,
for it was as good as a storehouse of food: the women used to go there
for lily-pads and sedge-roots, and the men would spear eels in its
muddy waters, while at times big flocks of duck settled on it, besides
other water-fowl. Burkamukk was a very wise chief, and all his people
were fat, and therefore contented.
As blacks count wealth, the people of Burkamukk were very well off.
They had plenty of skin rugs, so that no one went cold, even in the
winter nights; and the women had made them well, sewing them together
with the sinews of animals, using for their needles the small bone of a
kangaroo’s hind-leg, ground to a fine point. It was hard work to sew
these well, but the men used to take pains to get good skins, pegging
them out with tea-tree spikes and dressing them with wood-ashes and
fat, which they rubbed in until the skins were soft and supple; and so
the women thought that the least they could do was to sew them in the
very best way. Being particular about the rugs made the women
particular about other things as well, and they had a far better outfit
than could be found in most camps. Each woman had a good pitchi, a
small wooden trough hollowed out of the soft wood of the bean-tree, in
which food was kept. When the tribe went travelling the pitchi was as
useful as a s
Product ID: 9781776782543
Sku: 9781776782543
