Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 142, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1918 — BLACK FELLOW IS MASTER TRACKER [ARTICLE]

BLACK FELLOW IS MASTER TRACKER

I AUSTRALIAN NATIVE TYPICAL BLOODHOUND WHILE ON SCENT OF CRIMINAL. X. Recognizes Friend or Enemy Readily Merely by His Footprints. The art of the professional tracker ; is a fascinating thing to watch. The old-time western plainsman could trail a deer for two days through the forest, the modern White Mountain Apache of Arizona will follow a moccasined man over broken, jagged lava Country, there are said to be tribes in . the interior of. Brazil who can track for short distances by scenL But the king and past master of all trackers, the man who can make an Apache look like an apprentice boy scout, is the black fellow of Australia. He will perform feats of tracking that are almost ta I S 1 1 oeyona dviicl. The native Australian peoples are ranked low in the scale of humanity, and it may be because they are the most primitive of all races that they keep an almost animal delicacy of perception. But they add to it a very fine reasoning power in the things of the bush, and by combining the two qualities, they can tell not only where the man or the animal they track is go ing, but even what he is doing on th> way. The most spectacular exploits of tku trackers have been accomplished in the pursuit of criminals, on whase trail they are more deadly than bloodhounds. The Australian mounted policeman takes a black tracker along when he follows a criminal into desert or bush, and that settles it. The tracker will stay on the trail until the end of it is reached. It may take a day, or a week, or month —in one instance ■it took ten weeks —but the blackfellow never loses the trail for long. He will trail across rocks, across windblown sand, through a tangle of other footprints, he will pick up the trail again and if the quarry takes to the water, and he will report accurately the condition of the man pursued, whether he is strong, or weakening. So expert do these natives become in tracking that they can recognize a friend or an enemy as readily by his footprints as by his face. Personal Identification of a footprint by an expert black tracker is accepted as good evidence in a court of law. Such a tracker can even recognize the hoof mark of almost every horse that is known to him.