as past heeding even the
spirits of evil.

The women in other camps clutched their children to them, but spoke no
word. All was silent but the swirling leaves as the column gathered
them. Finding the deathbed guarded, the boolee turned sharply from the
camp and sped away down the road, dissolving on the poligonum flat in
the distance.

Yellen gave a sigh of relief.

But now her fears were verified; Beemunny was dead.

Poor old Beemunny! How the vanities of youth cling to one; how we are
'all sisters under the skin.'

She was ever so old, she was blind, her face was scarred with wrinkles,
yet one of her beauties remained, and she absolutely joyed in its
possession: it was her hair. Her hair was thick and fuzzy, when combed
would stand nearly straight out, which is quite unusual with the native
women's hair in that part. Beemunny one day asked one of the younger
women if I had ever heard what a lot of lovers she had had in her
youth, what fights there had been over her, and all because of her
beautiful hair.

Poor old Beemunny! Something in my own woman nature went out to her in
sympathy. She was old, she was ugly, her husband was dead, as were all
men to her.

Poor old Beemunny! Having once learnt her vanity, I never passed her
without saying 'Gubbah Tekkul!' 'Beautiful hair!' at which she would
beam and toss her head.

At sunrise came again the wailing; the singing of the Goohnai, or
dirge, wherein are enumerated all the multiplex totems of the deceased,
crooned in a wailing way, and each fresh person who comes to the camp
sings this dirge again. In olden times all would have been painted in
full war paint, weapons in hand, to see the corpse.

I was given permission to go to the funeral, old Bootha was to take me.

I heard that Beemunny had died early in the night. Her daughter and
nearest of kin had sat all night beside her body, with each a hand on
it to guard her from the spirits. She was now in her bark coffin, round
which were her own blankets to be buried with her. The coffin was made
of bark cut off right round a tree, split on one side from end to end;
the body was placed in this, then the bark lapped over it, the ends
were blocked up with other pieces, the whole secured by ropes. All day
until the burial some one of kin stayed beside the coffin, little fires
of Budtha kept smoking all the while. In the afternoon old Bootha came
for me, and we set out.

First in the procession marched two old men