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Updated: June 6, 2025
In the clear water of Brammo Bay, a greenish black object, a yard across by about a yard and a half long, moved slowly along, swaying this way and that, but maintaining a fairly accurate course consistent with the shore. As the boat drifted, it seemed as if an unsophisticated sting-ray had lapsed into the blissfulness of ease, careless alike of mankind and of its enemies in the water.
In the evening, the boats brought in a turtle, a sting-ray, and as many large cockles as came to about a pound and a half a man, for in each of them there was not less than two pounds of meat: In the night also we caught several sharks, which, though not a dainty, were an acceptable increase of our fresh provision.
Being determined to break up camp on the 27th, I sent the King George's Sound native on a-head, as soon as he had breakfasted, that, by preceding the party, he might have time to spear a sting-ray against we overtook him. The day was dull, cloudy, and warm, and still looking likely for rain, with the wind at north-east.
Many fish seemed to partake of the shark; some with a shark's head and shoulders, and the hind part of a shark; others with a shark's head and the body of a mullet; and some with a shark's head and the flat body of a sting-ray.
Eye dullish yellow; pupil sea-green, glaring in some lights; teeth transverse, like a file; spiracles two, large, behind the eye, in the same cavity; belly white, terminating at the caudal fin. Very common in the sheltered bays, close in shore among the weeds. Not eaten by the Aborigines, who greatly abhor them, as they do also the sting-ray. Specimen two feet nine inches and a half long.
After these we found bass, of which we took eight, weighing from six to ten pounds each; also three fine groupers, the largest twelve pounds. Pecetti caught a Tartar in the shape of a monstrous sting-ray, four feet across, with a tail three feet long armed with formidable spines.
To the northward, the lance has but one point: The shaft is made of cane, or the stalk of a plant somewhat resembling a bulrush, very straight and light, and from eight to fourteen feet long, consisting of several joints, where the pieces are let into each other, and bound together; to this are fitted points of different kinds; some are of hard heavy wood, and some are the bones of fish: We saw several that were pointed with the stings of the sting-ray, the largest that they could procure, and barbed with several that were smaller, fastened on in a contrary direction; the points of wood were also sometimes armed with sharp pieces of broken shells, which were stuck in, and at the junctures covered with resin: The lances that are thus barbed, are indeed dreadful weapons, for when once they have taken place, they can never be drawn back without tearing away the flesh, or leaving the sharp ragged splinters of the bone or shell which forms the beard, behind them in the wound.
But there were still cross-cuts along where he travelled through which he might yet regain the pathway of usefulness without disturbing the slumbering Miracles. This man was short and compactly built. He had an oblique, dead eye, like that of a sting-ray, and the moustache of a cocktail mixer.
Another subject of uneasiness arose from the nature of our diet; for some few days we had all been using a good deal of the sting-ray fish, and though at first we had found it palatable, either from confining ourselves too exclusively to it, or from eating too much, it had latterly disagreed with us.
A shrewd observer of natural science, he availed himself of unique opportunities for practical study. He conned first-hand the book of Nature, written large and fair, and illuminated with living designs. My one memento of him is the stiletto of a prodigious sting-ray. He had never seen a larger, nor have I nor any one to whom I have shown it.
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