to make a smoke and smoke the camp again. The nearest of kin to her husband has a right to claim her as wife when her mourning is over.
Should a woman be left a widow two or three times there are sinister whisperings about her. She is spoken of as having a 'white heart'; and no man can live long, they say, with a woman having a 'white heart.'
The graves in some parts of Australia are marked by carved trees; only a few painted upright posts marked them on the Narran.
A tabooed camp has always a marked tree—just a piece of bark cut off and some red markings made on the wood, which indicate that the place is gummarl.
Any possessions of the dead not buried with them are burnt, except the sacred stones; they are left to the wirreenun nearest of kin to the dead person.
Lately a case came under my notice of the taboo extended to the possessions of dead people.
A black man having two horses died. Neither his widow nor her mother would use those horses, even when he had been dead over a year. They would walk ten or twelve miles for their rations and carry them back, rather than use those horses before the term of mourning was over.
The widow was one of my particular friends, but she would not come to see me because her husband had been at the house shortly before he died. She camped nearly a mile away, and I went to see her there. After he had been dead about a year, she came to see me; but before she did so her mother walked all round the out-buildings, garden, yards, etc., with a bunch of smoking Budtha, crooning little spirit songs.
