During the performance of all these duties silence prevails. There is no loud talk or cries or shouts such as are heard ordinarily in camp. The very aged guests, male and female, occasionally weep copiously, and exhibit by their tears and their gestures gratitude for the attentions shown them; but the younger members of the strange tribe simply stare and wonder.
When night falls, the strangers find that miams have been prepared for them. Each family has one, and one is set apart for the young unmarried men. Silence prevails throughout the night, and it would be a breach of etiquette to indulge in the usual squabbles which serve under ordinary circumstances to relieve the tedium of the night in an encampment.
The duties performed and the ceremonies used in receiving and attending to the wants of a strange tribe have meanings quite intelligible to the Aborigines. When they welcome the strangers to the forest lands they signify that as long as they are friendly, and under such restrictions as their laws impose, they and their children may come there again without fear of molestation; the presents of boughs and leaves and grass are meant to show that these are theirs when they like to use them; and the water stirred with a reed is understood as a token that they may thereafter drink of it, and that no hostile spear will be raised against them.
The Aborigines have many rather peculiar ways of welcoming their friends when they arrive at an encampment after a long absence. The women usually cry with joy, and the men make a howling noise until the visitors actually appear. Strangers and visitors have various means of making known their approach to a camp. Sometimes they raise a singular cry. When the cry is heard by those in the camp, they know that a stranger or a visitor is approaching, and at once they begin to shout, and the shouting and noise are continued until the face of the visitor is seen and recognised. Strangers do not walk straight into a camp; some ceremony is observed. They sit down at a great distance from the place where the tribe is stationed, and remain there quietly until they are noticed. Sometimes they sit a long time before any one goes to them. If one from the tribe goes to the strangers and welcomes them, they then approach, and all kinds of civilities are paid to them by the men and women. Buckley says that when he first encountered a tribe of Aborigines the natives invariably struck their breasts and his also, making a noise between singing and crying—a sort of whine.
Sir Thomas Mitchell observed that when strange blacks met, the men did not at once begin to converse with each other; but there did not appear to be any such restraint on the women, who entered freely into conversation without check or rebuke. Piper—Sir Thomas's black follower—on one occasion encountered a strange native, and in vain was he entreated to ask a question of the unknown traveller; both stood facing each other for a quarter of an hour. They stood about eight yards apart, neither looking at the other, and only gradually and slowly did they at last enter into conversation. The female native was in the beginning the intermediate channel of communication.
The mode of receiving a stranger in the Cooper's Creek district is thus described by Mr. Gason:—"A native of influence, on arriving at one of the
