thing was
to be seen but a struggling mass of naked bodies all mixed up together.
Presently up came a man yelling and brandishing a stone knife. On
reaching the spot he suddenly gashed both his thighs with the knife,
cutting right across the muscles, so that, unable to stand, he dropped
down on the top of the struggling bodies, till his mother, wife, and
sisters dragged him out of the scrimmage, and immediately applied their
mouths to his gaping wounds, while he lay exhausted and helpless on the
ground. Gradually the struggling mass of dusky bodies untwined itself,
disclosing the unfortunate sick man, who was the object, or rather the
victim, of this well-meant demonstration of affection and sorrow. If he
had been ill before, he was much worse when his friends left him: indeed
it was plain that he had not long to live. Still the weeping and wailing
went on; the sun set, darkness fell on the camp, and later in the
evening the man died. Then the wailing rose louder than before, and men
and women, apparently frantic with grief, rushed about cutting
themselves with knives and sharp-pointed sticks, while the women
battered each other's heads with clubs, no one attempting to ward off
either cuts or blows. An hour later a funeral procession set out by
torchlight through the darkness, carrying the body to a wood about a
mile off, where it was laid on a platform of boughs in a low gum-tree.
When day broke next morning, not a sign of human habitation was to be
seen in the camp where the man had died. All the people had removed
their rude huts to some distance, leaving the place of death solitary;
for nobody wished to meet the ghost of the deceased, who would certainly
be hovering about, along with the spirit of the living man who had
caused his death by evil magic, and who might be expected to come to the
spot in the outward form of an animal to gloat over the scene of his
crime. But in the new camp the ground was strewed with men lying
prostrate, their thighs gashed with the wounds which they had inflicted
on themselves with their own hands. They had done their duty by the dead
and would bear to the end of their life the deep scars on their thighs
as badges of honour. On one man Messrs. Spencer and Gillen counted the
dints of no less than twenty-three wounds which he had inflicted on
himself at various times. Meantime the women had resumed the duty of
lamentation. Forty or fifty of them sat down in groups of five or six,
weeping