he is given over to the women, who wash him, paint his face with black lines (the pigment being powdered charcoal mingled with wee-rup), and dance before him. He is now a man, and can go to any neighbouring tribe and steal a young girl, and make her his wife.
The rites above described were witnessed by the late Mr. Thomas, and were practised, I believe, only by the Coast tribes. In other parts of the colony the ceremony on initiation was different.
A youth on arriving at manhood was conducted by three of the leaders of the tribe into the recesses of the woods, where he remained two days and one night. Being furnished with a suitable piece of wood, he knocked out two of the teeth of his upper front jaw, and on returning to the camp he gave the teeth to his mother. The youth again retired to the forest, and remained absent two nights and one day; and his mother during his absence selected a young gum-tree, and inserted in the bark of it in the fork of two of the topmost branches the teeth which had been knocked out. This tree ever afterwards was in some sense held sacred. It was made known only to certain persons of the tribe, and the youth himself was never permitted to learn where his teeth had been placed. If the youth died, the foot of the tree was stripped of its bark, and it was killed by making a fire about it, so that it might remain stricken and sere, as a monument of the deceased.[1]
Mur-rum Tur-uk-ur-uk.
The ceremonies called Mur-rum Tur-uk-ur-uk are performed when a girl attains the age of twelve or thirteen years. At a distance of one hundred yards from the main encampment two large fires are made of bark only, not a piece of stick nor a twig being used for the purpose of even kindling them. Each fire is made and maintained by an old woman, who sits by it in silence. The girl is brought out of the miam by her female friends, and is rubbed all over with charcoal-powder (kun-nun-der), and spotted also with white clay; the effect of which is neither ludicrous nor solemn, but rather calculated to excite surprise, even amongst those who are accustomed to see the Aborigines in their several disguises. As soon as the painting is finished, she is made to stand on a log, and a small branch, stripped of every leaf and bud, is placed in her right hand, having on the tip of each bare twig a very small piece of some farinaceous food. Young men, perhaps to the number of twenty, slowly approach her one by one; each throws a small bare stick at her, and bites off the food from the tip of one of the twigs, and spits it into the fire, and, returning from the fire, stamps, leaps, and raves, as in a corrobboree. As soon as each of the young men has performed this ceremony, the old women who have been attending to the fires approach the girl, and gather carefully every twig and stick that has been thrown at her, and, making a hole, bury them deeply in the ground. They are careful not to leave a single stick: each must be gathered and buried. This is done to prevent the sorcerers from taking away the girl's kidney-fat (marm-bu-la). When the twigs and sticks have become rotten, the girl is safe from the attacks of sorcerers and evil spirits. When the twigs are buried, and the
- ↑ Wm. Blandowski, Esq. Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Victoria, vol. I., p. 72.
