The outline of two outstretched hands joined at the wrists and figure of a hand with extended fingers is very common as a rock etching.
These are vestiges of the test formerly practiced among young men who aspired for admission to the fraternity of Salyko. The Salyko is a trinity of two women and a woman from whom the Hopitu obtained the first corn. The first test above referred to was that of putting their hands in the mud and impressing them upon the rock. Only those were chosen as novices the imprints of whose hands had dried on the instant.
Le Plongeon (a) tells that the tribes of Yucatan have the custom of printing the impress of the human hand, dipped in a red-colored liquid, on the walls of certain sacred edifices.
A. W. Howitt, in manuscript notes on Australian pictographs, says:
In very many places there are representations of a human hand imprinted or delineated upon the rocks or in caverns. In the mountains on the western side of the Darling river, in New South Wales, I have observed such, and the aborigines whom I questioned upon the subject said that these representations were made in sport. This reply would, however, be also given were any white man to find and draw their attention to one of the figures which are made in connection with the initiation ceremonies. The representations of hands are made in two ways. In one the hand is smeared with red ocher and water, and impressed upon the rock surface. In the other the hand, being placed upon the rock, a mouthful of red ocher or pipe-clay and water is squirted over it. The hand being then removed there remains its representation surrounded and marked out by the colored wash.
Thomas Worsnop (b) says:
Fig. 1178.—Cave painting, Australia.
Mr. Winnecke, in 1879, saw several drawings on rocks and in caves, [Fig. 1178], and describes them as follows:
There are found in several large caves near Mount Skinner and Ledans hill, in latitude 22° 30′ south and longitude 134° 30′ east. The natives appear to have selected the smooth surface of granite rocks inside several large caves, which spots are not subject to the influence of wind or rain. These caves are resorted to by the natives during excessive rainy seasons, as indicated by their camp preparations, and it is beyond doubt that these drawings have been performed during these periods of forced inactivity by some artistically inclined native. Those I am alluding to are somewhat numerous in these particular localities and present a uniform appearance.