length and four inches wide, in each hand. In the olden times—forty odd years back—the men were entirely naked during these ceremonies, but now civilisation has so far modified their customs, even in the Jeraeil, that they wore their trousers, and some of them their shirts also. The line of men came rapidly forward from the bush in a series of short runs, following and imitating the actions of their leader, who came on in a serpentine course, shouting "Huh! Huh!" beating the ground in time with his strips of bark, first on the one side and then on the other. After every fifteen or twenty paces the men stopped, and raising their strips of bark, set up a loud shout of "Yeh!" (Hurrah!).
As soon as the men appeared, the women began to beat their rugs, the mothers kept time by stamping their yam-sticks on the ground, and the seated rows of Tutnurring and Krauun swayed in perfect unison alternately to right and left. The men, having run in a winding course once or twice past the boys, formed a semicircle in front and near them; and, kneeling down, struck the ground violently with their bark strips, shouting "Huh! Huh! Yeh!" This continued some little time, and then the men walked off to the camp, after having stripped off their disguising costumes.
This preliminary ceremony ended the proceedings for the day. The Jeraeil has now commenced, and by it the initiated men have claimed the boys from their mothers, and have shown their intention of making men of them.
"Laying the Boys down to sleep."—This second stage in the ceremonies commenced at a little before sundown on the following day. In the afternoon the men had prepared the place in which, as they said, the Tutnurring were to be "laid down to sleep," A curved screen of boughs had been made, about three feet in height, twenty-five feet wide across the opening, and ten feet deep. The space thus partly enclosed was filled about six inches deep with freshly plucked eucalyptus twigs, so as to form a couch.
The same ceremonies were now repeated that had been gone through on the previous evening. At their termination the men retired into the bush to prepare for the next ceremony. The boys were placed standing in a row with
