Vegetable Produce

Birds form an important article of food in all parts of Australia, the most important being the emu, turkey, duck, pigeon, and various kinds of cockatoo. Some of the methods of capturing these and other birds are sublimely simple ; in New South Wales, Angas tells us, a native would stretch himself on a rock in the sun, a piece of fish in his hand ; this would attract the attention of a bird of prey, which the black would promptly seize by the leg as soon as it tried to carry off the fish. In the same way water-fowl were taken by swimming out under water and pulling them beneath the surface, or, with a little more circumstance, by noosing them with a slender rod, the head of the fowler being covered with weeds as he swam out to his prey, which he dragged beneath the water; as soon as he had the bird in his hand he broke its neck, thrust it into his girdle, and was ready for another victim. Shags and cormorants more often rest on stakes than on the surface of the water ; accordingly, on the Lower Murray, stakes were set up for them ; the native swam out with his noose and snared them as before. During dark nights they drove shags from their resting-places, catching them as they tried to settle, and receiving in the process severe bites from the terrified birds. Almost equally simple was the method of taking black swans in West Australia. At the moulting season young men lay in ambush on the banks till the birds had got too far away from deep water to be able to swim off; then they ran round them and cut off their retreat. The West Australians would also kill a bird as it flew from its nest ; one man creeping up threw his spear so as to wound it slightly as it sat, and the other brought it down with his missile club as it flew off. Boldest of all, perhaps, is the method of taking turkey bustards in Queensland ; the fowler hangs a moth or a grasshopper, sometimes even a small bird, to the end of a rod, on which is also a noose. With a bush in front of him he creeps up to his prey, which is fascinated by the movements of the animal on the rod ; as soon as the black is near enough he slips the noose over its head and secures it. In the Boulia district pelicans are taken from ambushes ; the fowler throws shells some distance into the water, attracting the bird, which thinks the splashes are made by fish rising ; then the black pats the water with his fingers, to mimic the splashing of fish on the surface, the pelican swims round and presently falls a victim to the boomerang, or is captured by hand. The Torres Straits pigeon is taken by simply throwing any ordinary stick into the flock, as it passes down to the foreshore at no great distance from the ground ; or it may be knocked down in a more elaborate way. The flocks take the same path every night, and a high bushy tree is selected which lies in their path ; the black holds in his hands a thin switch, some fifteen feet long, which is tied to his wrist to prevent it from being accidentally dropped ; he himself is lashed to the tree to prevent accidents ; and when the pigeons come past he sweeps at them, generally bagging a fair number. On Hinchinbrook Island, the roosting-trees were known to the natives. They prepared fires beneath in the daytime ; when the pigeons had retired to rest, the fires were lighted and down came the birds. On the Tully the black observes on what trees the cockatoos roost. Then he makes fast to a suitable branch a long lawyer cane, which reaches to the ground ; at night he mounts this, holding on by his first and second toes when he moves his hands; slung round his neck he carries a long thin stick ; and with this he knocks the birds down as soon as he is within reach of them. Small cockatoos and other birds are also captured with bird-lime, which is spread not only on the branches on which they roost, but also on the young blossoms. The swamp pheasant is taken on its nest by means of a net ; in Gippsland they are taken on the nest by hand. The boomerang is a very effective weapon in a large flock of birds. Grey describes how they are knocked down with the kyli at night ; wounded birds are used as decoys ; for these birds seem to be much attached to each other. One is fastened to a tree, and its cries bring some of its companions to its aid. In Victoria and South Australia wickerwork erec- tions were made for the birds to settle on ; near them the black lay in ambush, his noose ready, and attracted his prey by imitating their calls. Emus are powerful birds, weighing perhaps 130 lbs,, and they are not so easily captured. Strong nets, sometimes fifty yards in length, are often employed to take them. The hunter notes the track by which the bird visits a water-hole, and sets up his net some thirty or forty yards behind it, the operation taking no more than five minutes ; when it returns, its flight is prevented by stationing men at possible avenues of escape, the hunters rush out and the bird is entangled in the net or knocked over with boomerangs or nulla- nullas. Sometimes an alley was built, broad at the entrance and narrowing continually, till it ended in a net ; near the opening, midway between the ends, the hunter concealed himself and imitated the call of the bird ; this he does by means of a hollow log, some two or three feet long, from which the inside core has been burnt. Holding this close to the ground over a small excavation, he makes a sort of drumming sound ; the emu struts past the men in ambush, and is easily driven into the net. Emu pits are dug, either singly or in combination ; near the feeding-grounds sometimes they are combined with a fence, opposite the openings of which they are placed, with a large central pit, in which are ambushed three or four blacks to call the birds. The emu is hunted with dogs or surrounded by the whole of a black camp ; it may also be speared by stalking it. The hunter rubs himself with earth to get rid of any smell from the body ; then with bushes in front of him and a collar-like head-dress in some parts, he makes for the bird. Young cassowaries are often run down. Ducks are often taken by stretching a long net across a river or lagoon ; the ends are fixed in the trees or on posts ; and one or more men go up-stream at a distance from the river, and then drive the birds down. At a suitable distance from the net they are frightened and caused to rise ; then a native whistles like the duck-hawk, and a piece of bark is thrown into the air to imitate the flight of the hawk ; at this the flock dips and many are caught in the net. For this mode of cap- ture four men are required. Ducks are also stalked and speared, or snared by fixed nooses set in the swamps, according to a statement of Morrell's, which, however, he leaves us to infer the kind of bird caught in this way. Flock pigeons are taken by a method unlike any described. Their habits are noted, and a small arti- ficial water-hole made in the neighbourhood of their usual drinking-place ; near this the fowler conceals himself, with a net ten or twelve feet in length laid flat on the ground close to the water ; the lower edge is fixed to the ground by means of twigs, and along the whole length of the upper edge runs a thin curved stick, the end of which the black holds in his hand ; the pigeons sit on the water like ducks ; and as soon as a favourable opportunity presents itself, the fowler, with one movement of the arm, turns the net over and bags the unsuspecting birds. For scrub turkeys a series of lawyer cane hoops are set up with connecting strips ; this is baited in the morning with nuts, fruit, etc., and about sundown he takes up his position in his ambush some twelve feet away right in front of the opening ; as soon as the turkey walks in, the black rushes out and secures it. In West Australia birds were generally cooked by plucking them and throwing them on the fire ; but when they wished to dress a bird nicely they drew it and cooked the entrails separately, parts of them being considered great delicacies. A triangle was then formed round the bird by three red-hot pieces of stick against which ashes were placed ; hot coals were stuffed inside it, and it was served full of gravy on a dish of bark. In Victoria a sort of oven was made of heated stones on which wet grass was strewn ; the birds were placed on the grass and covered with it ; more hot stones were piled on and the whole covered with earth. In this way they were half stewed. An ingenious method of cook- ing large birds was to cover them with a coating of mud and put them on the fire; the mud-pie was covered with ashes and a big fire kept up till the dish was ready ; then the mud crust was taken off, the feathers coming with it, and a juicy feast was before the hungry black. The Austrah'an is by no means uncivilised ; he appreciates high game as much as any gourmet amongst us, but he enjoys it in a somewhat different way. The Cooper's Creek aborigines collect in a bladder the fat of an exceedingly high, not to say putrid pelican, and bake it in the ashes ; then each black has a suck at the bag, the contents of which are distinctly stronger than train-oil, and what runs out of the mouth is rubbed on the face ; thus nothing is wasted.

This brings us to the subject of plant-food. 

Grey says that a species of flag was cultivated in West Australia, at any rate to the extent of burning it, in order to improve the next crop. He describes exten- sive yam grounds on the Hutt River, but it does not follow that these were artificial. The evidence of Gregory, however, leaves no doubt that there was actual cultivation on the west coast. He says that the natives, when they dug up yams, replaced the heads {fourn. Antli. hist., xvi. 131), and this can only be described as cultivation. The cultivation of purslane {Portulacd) seems to be a well-established fact. It is grown like melons on slightly raised mounds ; before the seed vessels are ripe, the plant is cut, turned upside down and dried in the sun ; then the seed vessels are plucked and rubbed down and the seed collected. Many pounds' weight can be collected in a day, even where there is no cultivation, and the cakes from it are far more nutritious than the well-known nardoo cakes, on which Burke and Wills tried to subsist. 

To describe in detail the vegetable food of the Australian aborigines would demand far more space than can be here allotted to the subject. Probably they employ as food at least three hundred species of vegetables, using the roots or tubers, the pith, the leaves, the fruits, kernels or husks, the seeds, and the gum, according to the species. Often more than one product is in use from a single species. 

When other food is scarce nardoo is the stand-by of the natives in the centre of Australia, but its nutritive properties are small. Of all the fruits eaten by the natives the most remarkable is perhaps the bunya- bunya nut. It is found in a limited area behind Brisbane, and bears fruit in abundance only once in three years. It is ripe in January, and tribes come from a distance for the feast ; each has its own trees ; in fact, each family owns one or more. The nut is roasted in the fire ; it is also placed in a water-hole and eaten after germination. Zamia nuts {Cycas media) form an important article of diet in many parts ; in its raw state it is poisonous. The shell is taken off the nuts, which are broken, pounded, and left in a dilly bag for four or five days in running water ; when they are soft enough they are pounded and baked under the ashes. Grey gives a somewhat different account. He says they are soaked, after being gathered in March, then they are placed in holes in the sand, where they remain till the pulp is quite dry. They are eaten raw or roasted, and in the latter state taste quite as nice as a chestnut. The yam {dioscored) is also highly important ; in some districts the holes from which the natives have dug them cover miles of ground. It is generally considered the province of the women to dig roots, but in some parts the men do so too, in which case the produce is reserved for their use. To get a yam half an inch in circumference and a foot in length, a hole has to be dug about a foot square and two feet deep. To do this the women have only a pointed stick ; this they drive firmly into the ground and shake it, so as to loosen the earth, which they scoop up and throw out with great rapidity with the fingers of the left hand. The roots are eaten raw or roasted ; but in West Australia the natives always mix it with an earth before eating it, alleging that it otherwise is apt to cause dysentery. In Queensland it is washed, baked for four hours, and mashed up in a grass dilly bag ; it is then strained through the dilly bag into a bark trough, in which the bag also remains until only fibre is left in it. Then the mash is washed, sometimes with seven or eight different waters. As soon as the washing is com- pleted a hole is dug in some sandy place and lined with clean sand ; into this the semi-liquid mass is poured, and when all the water has drained off, it looks much like tinned potato, according to Dr. Roth. 

Morrell, the English sailor who was captive among the Queensland natives many years ago, gives an account of the way in which the fruit of Avicennia officinalis was prepared ; a hole was dug and stones heated in the fire arranged on the bottom ; on this was put the fruit and water sprinkled over it ; then bark was put on the top and it was baked for two hours ; a second hole was dug, the fruit put in, water poured over it twice, and it was ready for eating. 

The bean-tree, or Moreton Bay chestnut, is prepared by being steeped eight or ten days ; then it is dried in the sun, roasted on hot stones and pounded ; mixed with water, it is made into thin cakes and baked. 

Solanum hystrix, known as walga in South Australia, is prepared in a curious way ; it is pounded and mixed with congoo, i.e. mallee root bark ; then the shell and seeds are removed and a cake made. When the fruit was not obtainable, the blacks bled themselves and mixed blood and bark into cakes. 

Mylitta australis, a kind of truffle, sometimes called native bread, was eaten in Victoria and possibly elsewhere. In West Australia the natives obtained from the acacias a kind of gum, called kwonnat, and on the grounds where this was obtainable assembled large crowds and held their annual markets. 

A kind of bulrush was largely eaten in South Australia ; it was prepared by being cooked between two stones ; it was to them what bread is to the European. It was cooked on a heap of limestone with wood laid on the top ; another layer of heated stones was placed on these and then wet grass to make steam ; a mound of earth completed the oven. After chewing the bulrush root they spat out the fibrous part, which they converted into rope for fishing-lines, nets, etc. The mussel was usually eaten with the bulrush root. 

This brief survey has not touched on a tithe of the important food-plants, but some idea will have been gained of the extent of the Australian garden and of the complication of the cooking processes ; indeed one may well wonder by what process they arrived at these ingenious processes, especially in the case of poisonous substances. 

It is often asserted that the Australian does not store food ; this is as untrue as that he does not cultivate his soil. Much of his food he must perforce eat quickly, or natural processes would make his labour in vain. But the bunya-bunya nut, grass and other seed cakes, and possibly other kinds of food, were certainly put aside for future use. 

Before we leave the subject of vegetable products mention must be made of pituri, a remarkable plant, the botanical name of which is Diiboisia Hopwoodii. It does not grow in all districts, and is the most important article of commerce. As soon as it is ready — it flowers in January — that is to say about March, messengers are sent, sometimes hundreds of miles, with spears, boomerangs, nets and other wares, to exchange for the pituri, which is in the form of half-green, half- yellow tea with plenty of chips in it. After roasting them on the ashes the chips become pliable and are wetted, teased up with the fingers, and the larger frag- ments removed. Some acacia leaves are then heated over the fire and then burnt ; the ashes are mixed with pituri and the whole worked up into quids about 2| inches long by f inch diameter. These are chewed, and when not in use are carried behind the ear. 

Sometimes pituri is taken before fighting, but its use is common to all classes and both sexes ; it seems to produce a voluptuous, dreamy sensation. Tobacco is now in use among the blacks, of course of European importation, and they are said to smoke pituri when the supply runs short. It is said that the native women use a species of Goodenia to make their children sleep when they are on a long journey.

One day, in the heat of April, there appeared before my tent a naked woman and her crippled son. They had walked for a thousand miles, from Mingana Water, beyond the border of Western and South Australia, after having been abandoned in the desert by a mob of thirty wild cannibals. The woman’s husband was dead, and her name was Nabbari. She had a firestick, a wooden scoop for digging out animal burrows, and her digging-stick, pointed at one end. Her boy, Marburning, carried a broken spear to help him in his lameness, but Nabbari had carried him most of the way.

Following the tracks, as the mobs had turned hither and thither in their search of food and water, so Nabbari zigzagged with the boy, often forced to retrace her steps. Four seasons, each with its own special foods, had passed in her travels and never in all that time was her firestick allowed to go out; for it is forbidden to women to make fires.

Day after day small fires were lighted to cook snakes and rabbits and bandicoots, lizards and iguanas, and every living thing that provided a mouthful. They killed many dingoes, and even their pet puppies, but the little boy clung lovingly to the last one. When meat supplies faded, they lived upon edible grubs and honey, ants, and beetles, and wong-unu (a grass), the seeds of which Nabbari masticated before she cooked them when there was no water. In the arid areas she found moisture in the mallee-roots, and shook the heavy dew-drops into her weera from the small bushes and herbage so that she and her boy throve on the long journey.

Many times they came upon the scene of old fights, or the hidden places of the manhood ceremonies—of these they would make a wide detour—or an orphan water where, after she had drunk of it, Nabbari would set up her death-wail. But the live tracks of her relatives who had preceded her were always visible, and from them she gained courage to follo

I found plenty of mushrooms on the hillsides on the warm days of August, but the Eskimos would have none of them: in fact, they were hardly to be persuaded to gather them. To their minds there is something uncanny about mushrooms. "Aha" they used to say, "the food of the Evil One —piungitut (bad)." 

But though gardening is entirely foreign to the Eskimo nature, they do not entirely scorn the good things of the earth. 

The berries are a great boon, so much that after the failure of the berry crop in 1904 — because a plague of mice had eaten the young shoots in the springtime — there was an epidemic of ill-health among the people.

(Note: Apparently the flu went around in 1904, so not sure if this is a Vitamin C deficiency or an infectious disease the Eskimo can't survive: "Poor Joshua did not live to see many more aiveks; he died in the big influenza epidemic of 1904.")

 In most years the scrubby bushes that crawl upon the ground are loaded with succulent berries — a truly marvellous provision — and the people gather them not only by handfuls and bucketfuls, but by barrelfuls. In October, when the ground was already becoming powdered with snow and frost, and there was ice upon the pools among the moss and on the stones that strew the beach, I have seen the Eskimo women putting their barrels on tall rocks, with heavy stones upon the lid, or slinging them over branches of trees, and I have asked them "Why?" 

"Soon freeze," they answer, "high up— not get covered with snow — good all the winter"; and I saw that there is a certain amount of provident laying up for the future in the Eskimo life. 

I was glad to see it, for I had thought at first that these hunters, who go out after the seals, and feast high while there is plenty, would have no other idea than to live literally from hand to mouth. But I see that where Nature has taught them the need, they lay up store. They dry reindeer meat after Easter and keep it for the weeks when the ice is cracking and seals are hard to find; they dry codfish in the summer, simply hanging it in the open air unsalted, and use it for food between the going of the codfish and the coming of the seals in autumn; they store up the berries for the winter. With these exceptions, which are long-established customs, the Eskimos are not a thrifty folk. Even the promise of a ten per cent, interest on their savings does not make these hunters see the value of a bank balance: they like to handle the worth of their earnings at once, and in solid substance.

The flat, skinny figure is no longer in vogue. Slimness is to be desired, but in the words of an international authority "rounded slimness" should be the goal of every woman. 

In attaining "rounded slimness," diet plays a very important part. Foods formerly avoided are recommended in every day's menu. These include meat, eggs, milk and plenty of vegetables and fruit. Cereals with milk or cream and sprinkled with sugar are also important in the diet for "rounded slimness." 

Particular attention should be paid to desserts. Puddings, custards, fruit pies and ice cream not only have food value but complete the meal in a most satisfying way. Candy is also an ideal dessert. And for variation try cream cheese and crackers with jelly or jam. 

To avoid monotony in the diet, many foods can be improved by a little sugar. This is especially true of vegetables which often are tasteless because they do not reach the home immediately after they are picked. For example--spinach, tomatoes, carrots, cabbage and peas are much improved in flavor by adding a dash of sugar. A pinch of salt to a dash of sugar is a good rule to follow. 

Aside from the enjoyment that sugar brings, it plays two important roles. First, it furnishes energy; and second, it helps consume excess fat which might otherwise be added to the body. Good food promotes health and beauty. The Sugar Institue. 

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