here are comely exceptions. And yet at big _corroborees_ on the
occasion of a marriage, the men always chanted praises to the virtue and
beauty of the bride!

The girl who possessed an exceptionally large and flat nose was
considered a great beauty. Talking about noses, it was to me a
remarkable fact, that the blacks consider a warrior with a big nose and
large distended nostrils a man possessed of great staying power. For one
thing, they consider his breathing apparatus exceptionally perfect.

As a general rule (there are exceptions in the case of a very "beautiful"
woman), when a woman dies she is not even buried; she simply lies where
she has fallen dead, and the camp moves on to another place and never
returns to the unholy spot. And it may be mentioned here that the blacks
never allude to a dead person by name, as they have a great horror of
departed spirits. And so childish and suspicious are they, that they
sometimes even cut off the feet of a dead man to prevent his running
about and frightening them at inconvenient moments. I used to play upon
their fears, going out into the bush after dark, and pretending to
commune with the evil spirits. The voice of these latter was produced by
means of reed whistles. Once I made myself a huge, hideous mask out of a
kangaroo skin, with holes slit in it for the nose, mouth, and eyes. I
would don this strange garb in the evenings, and prowl about the vicinity
of the camp, holding blazing torches behind the mask, and emitting
strange noises--sometimes howling like a wolf and at others shouting
aloud in my natural voice. On these occasions the blacks thought I was
in my natural element as a spirit. But they never ventured to follow me
or attempted to satisfy themselves that I was not fooling them all the
while. Yamba, of course, knew the joke, and as a rule helped me to dress
for the farce, but she took good care never to tell any one the secret.
No doubt had the blacks ever learned that it was all done for effect on
my part, the result would have been very serious; but I knew I was pretty
secure because of the abnormal superstition prevalent among them.

The women, as I have before hinted, are treated in a horribly cruel
manner, judged from our standpoint; but in reality they know not what
cruelty is, because they are absolutely ignorant of kindness. They are
the beasts of burden, to be felled to the earth with a bludgeon when they
err in some trivial respect; and