pon furiously up and down the circle,
he advanced and retreated before the accused, brandishing the spear at
them, and alternately threatening and wailing. No one replied, but the
melancholy dirge was still kept up by the widows in the rear.

After sufficiently exciting himself in this manner for some time, he
advanced with uplifted spear, and successively repeating his blows
speared four or five persons among the accused natives in the left arm,
each of them pushing forward his arm unflinchingly for the blow as he
advanced upon them. Tenberry now again hung down his head and took up his
lamentation for a short time, after which he paced about rapidly,
vehemently haranguing, and violently gesticulating, and concluded by
ordering all the natives present to separate their camps, and each tribe
to make their own apart.

Mourning is performed by the men by cutting their beards [Note 84 at end
of para.] and hair, and daubing the head and breast with a white pigment;
among the women, by cutting and burning the hair close off [Note 85 at
end of para.] to the head and plastering themselves with pipe-clay.
In some cases, hot ashes are put upon the head to singe the hair to
its very roots, and they then literally weep "in dust and ashes." Among
some of the Murray tribes, a mourning cap is worn by the women, made two
or three inches thick of carbonate of lime. It is moulded to the head
when moist around a piece of net work; the weight is eight pounds and
a half. (Pl. 1, fig. 17.)

[Note 84: The custom among the Australians of putting dust or ashes on the
head, of shaving the head, of clipping the beard, and of lacerating the
body at death or in sign of mourning, appears very similar to
the practices among the Israelites in the time of Moses. Vide
Leviticus xix. 27, 28; Leviticus xxi. 5; Jeremiah xiviii. 30, 31, 32;
Revelations xviii. 19, etc.]

[Note 85: The women among the American Indians also cut off the hair
close to the head as a sign of mourning.--Vide Catlin, vol. i.]

The lamentations for the dead do not terminate with the burial;
frequently they are renewed at intervals by the women, during late hours
of the night, or some hours before day-break in the morning. Piercingly
as those cries strike upon the traveller in the lonely woods, if raised
suddenly, or very near him, yet mellowed by distance they are soothing
and pleasing, awakening a train of thoughts and feelings, which, though
sad and solemn, are yet such as th