; during this part of the ceremony, a
band of elderly women, generally the mother and other near relatives,
surround the group, crying or lamenting, and lacerating their thighs and
backs with shells or flints, until the blood streams down. When well
ochred all over, the novice is led away by another native, apart from the
rest of the tribe, or if there are more than one, they stand together
linked hand in hand, and when tired sit down upon bunches of green boughs
brought for that purpose, for they are neither allowed to sit on the
ground, nor to have any clothing on; and when they move about they always
carry a bunch of green boughs in each hand.

They are now ready for the ceremony, which is usually performed by
influential natives of distant tribes, and which generally takes place at
the meetings of these tribes, as in the case of the meeting of the
Moorunde natives, and the Nar-wij-jerook tribe described in Chapter
II.P.220. On that occasion, there were three Moorunde natives to be
operated upon. As soon as the ceremonial of the meeting of the tribes had
been gone through, as already described, the Nar-wij-jerook natives
retired about a hundred yards, and sat down on the ground, the Moorunde
people remaining standing. The three spears which had little nets
attached to them, and which had been brought down by the Nar-wij-jerooks,
were now advanced in front of that tribe, still seated and stuck in a row
in the ground. Three men then got up and seated themselves at the foot of
the three spears, with their legs crossed. Two other natives then went
over to the Moorunde people, to where the three novices stood shaking and
trembling, like criminals waiting for their punishment, seizing them by
the legs and shoulders, and carefully lifting them from the ground, they
carried each in turn, and laid them on their backs at full length upon
green boughs, spread upon the ground in front of the three men sitting by
the spears, so that the head of each rested on the lap of one of the
three. From the moment of their being seized, they resolutely closed
their eyes, and pretended to be in a deep trance until the whole was
over. When all three novices had been laid in their proper position,
cloaks were thrown over them, but leaving the face exposed, and a
Nar-wij-jerook coming to the side of each, carefully lifted up a portion
of the covering and commenced plucking the hair from the pubes. At
intervals, the operators were relieved by oth