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| FIG. 32. |
Mr. J. A. Panton has sent me a very curious head-dress (Oogee)—(Fig. 32)—which is worn in the corrobboree dance by the men of Cape York. It is formed on a framework of sticks. The feathers of the cockatoo are notched at the ends (except the lower feather at each side), and the quills are turned over the curved stick, and very neatly tied with twine. The inner arch is strengthened at the back by sticks, and the cloth which covers them is exactly like canvas. The two spaces which would appear just above the eyes when the head-dress was worn have a border of thick twine. They are colored with red-ochre, as is also the edge of the inner circle. The whole is ingeniously constructed; and the white and yellow of the feathers, and the red paint, must have appeared hideous by the light of the corrobboree fires.
Mr. Wilhelmi says that in the north-west the men decorate their heads after a strange fashion, on occasions of rejoicings and when engaged in their mystic ceremonies. They place in the head-band, behind the ears, two small pieces of green wood, decorated from one end to the other with very thin shavings, which appear like a plume of white feathers. The sticks are so placed as to admit of their being tied together in front, and at a distance they resemble two long horns. The Port Lincoln blacks get white birds' down, and make a sort of wreath, which looks not unlike a woman's cap.
A head-dress of feathers is also worn by the old men at Cooper's Creek.
On the Macleay River, at the ceremony of initiation, the men wear high top-knots of grass, while others tie the hair in a knot, and cover the head with the snowy down of the cockatoo.[1]
In other parts a plume of white cockatoo feathers is worn. Sir Thomas Mitchell saw, near the River Bogan, some rather curious decorations. One had a kind of network, confining his hair in the form of a round cap, from
