“Meanwhile the subjects of the deceased monarch assembled, each one bearing in his hand a shell, and crowding round the enclosure where the body was roasting. Then followed a ceremony much too horrid for detail. It shall only be hinted at. Like all animal bodies subjected to the action of fire ... the saucer-like shells that were held beneath ... with which every subject anointed the tip of his tongue!
“Well, when the body had been duly smoked, and as far as possible mummied, the king’s dutiful lubras took it down, wrapped it up carefully, and for three months, by means of relief squads, carried it to and fro through the entire length and breadth of the defunct king’s domains. The bounds having thus been beaten they return to head-quarters, and there having selected a gum-tree, proper and tall, they set the old man gently and firmly in a fork of the topmost bough. But he might get cold, for they don’t believe in his death while his body is to be seen, so they build over him a little tent of twigs and grass, and then leave him to his fate.”
In an earlier part of Mr. Jessop’s hook (Sturtland and Flindersland) mention is made of a certain “King John,” the proprietor of a skull of marvellous thickness, which was deposited as a natural curiosity in the “office” at the Sturtland station. Whether there were two monarchs of the same name, or this was the veritable skull of the king of Adelaide fallen from its nest in the gum-tree is not known, though as the latter monarch was renowned for shrewdness and intelligence, it is probable that the thick skull belonged to him. “Of his prowess and the difficulties of his position,” writes Mr. Jessop, “his skull is a lasting monument, more durable than brass or stone,” graven by art or man’s device. “Upon it I counted fourteen cavities, in each of which a marble would rest, all dents made by the waddies or clubs of enemies whom he had encountered.”
As already intimated the plebeian Bushman receives none of the sepulchral honours paid to the king. When he shows signs of giving up the ghost, his friends carry him out of his “wurley,” or hut, and one of them lays him straight along the ground as though he were already dead, with his hands by his side, and his feet close together. The dying man’s friend then commences what to a looker on would pass for a sort of mesmeric process: he strokes the patient from head to foot, carefully drawing his hands down the whole length of the body, and when arrived at the extremities pretending to throw something away. When this has gone on for the proper time, he pulls up stones and casts them with angry gestures at some imaginary spirit; not, however, to drive off any that he had just cast out, but to keep away the chief of evil spirits, who is always at hand to snatch away a Bushman’s life when he is so weakened by sickness as to be unable to take fast hold on it.
Should he recover, well and good; but should he die (and it is more than likely), he is wrapped in his opossum rug after the fashion of a mummy, strings being wound round his body from his neck to his feet; and when he is laid in the grave, stones are placed upon him till they reach the surface of the ground. In some cases, however, the body is buried upright, and in a bent or sitting posture. The grave is of an oval or elliptical shape, as might be expected; but what is very remarkable, the body when laid straight always has its feet to the east and head to the west, as though to be able to welcome the rising sun.
Mourning seems to be a very prevalent custom among all the natives, and they show by their adoption of pretty nearly the same mode a common bond which seldom appears in any other of their ways and actions. There are two fashions which take the lead of all others, one in which red and blue colours are used, and the other in which white is most conspicuous. These colours are painted on the face in streaks of various forms, strongly suggestive of the tattooing of the New Zealanders; but sometimes laid on in such a way that the nose is half of one colour and half of another.
The women are said to restrict their exhibitions of grief to the colours alone, but the men extend their signs of woe to plastering the head with white clay, which their respect will not allow them to remove; time alone has the power of assuaging their sorrow by crumbling the nightcap to pieces. As the women work or hunt for food while the men sit in the wurley all day, this excess of pain and grief is probably nothing more than an excess of laziness, especially as it lasts from one to two months at a time. The red earth or ruddle is found in one spot only in the northern country, somewhere near the gorge in the Hayward Range. This is much celebrated, and is sought after by every tribe far and near; and although these tribes are hostile to each other, and on any other occasion to meet would be to fight, like the North-American Indian and his “Pipe-stone Quarry,” the Ruddle plain is neutral ground on which Bushmen foes may meet and dig in harmony.
Australian Weapons.
