non-existent' in Australia, mentioning as exceptions
its presence among the Euahlayi; the Wotjobaluk in Victoria; the
Yaraikkanna of Cape York; and 'probably' some of the northern tribes on
the other side of the Gulf of Carpentaria. [MAN (1904), No. 53, p. 85.]

Perhaps attention has not been directed to the animal familiar in
Australia, or perhaps it is really an infrequent thing among the
tribes.

CHAPTER IV

THE MEDICINE MEN

I used to wonder how the wirreenuns or doctor-wizards of the tribe
attained their degrees.

I found out that the old wizards fix upon a young boy who is to follow
their profession. They take him to a tribal burial-ground at night.
There they tie him down and leave him, after having lit some fires of
fat at short distances round him.

During the night that boy, if he be shaky in his nerves, has rather a
bad time.

One doctor of our tribe gave me a recital of his own early experience.

He said, after the old fellows had gone, a spirit came to him, and
without undoing his fastenings by which he was bound, turned him over,
then went away. Scarcely had the spirit departed when a big star fell
straight from the sky alongside the boy; he gazed fixedly at it, and
saw emerge from it, first the two hind legs, then the whole of a Beewee
or iguana. The boy's totem was a Beewee, so he knew it would not hurt
him. It ran close up to him, climbed on him, ran down his whole length,
then went away.

Next came a snake straight towards his nose, hissing all the time. He
was frightened now, for the snake is the hereditary enemy of the
iguana. The boy struggled to free himself, but ineffectually. He tried
to call out but found himself dumb. He tried to shut his eyes, or turn
them from the snake, but was powerless to do so. The snake crawled on
to him and licked him. Then it went away, leaving the boy as one
paralysed. Next came a huge figure to him, having in its hand a gunnai
or yam stick. The figure drove this into the boy's head, pulled it out
through his back, and in the hole thus made placed a 'Gubberah,' or
sacred stone, with the help of which much of the boy's magic in the
future was to be worked.

This stone was about the size and something the shape of a small lemon,
looking like a smoothed lump of semi-transparent crystal. It is in such
stones that the wi-wirreenuns, or cleverest wizards, see visions of the
past, of what is happening in the present at a distance, and of the
future; al