Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/394

Rh Bunches of scarlet feathers are often fastened on the upper part of the arm like a pair of short sleeves, and a defiant look is given to the countenance by sticking a smooth white bone, the length of a quill pen, through a hole in the cartilage of the nose, just as a careful henwife will run a feather through the beak of a fowl that persists in sitting at an inexpedient time.

On one occasion Khourabene affected a pointed beard in the style of Louis Napoleon, having shaved off his whiskers in the most faultless manner with a piece of glass; he next proceeded to cover his head with a shock of minute ringlets, using the stem of a tobacco-pipe as a substitute for curling-irons.

Warlike accoutrements are, of course, as much de rigueur at a "corobbery" as a sword in court dress, and the weapons in which most pride seemed to be taken were the formidable "glass spears," so called because they are armed for about the length of a foot with small bits of broken glass stuck firmly to the shaft with the resin of the Xanthorrhoea. In former days these spears were armed with sharp fragments of quartz, the glass being an improvement dating from the arrival of the English, and the consequent strewing of the country with broken bottles. These last, beside being useful for arming spears and for shaving purposes, are employed by the natives in cutting deep decorative wounds several inches long upon their shoulders and chests which, when healed into wide-seamed scars, are highly prized as personal improvements, and certainly have this one advantage over all removable ornaments that they are not affected by the native rules for exchange of portable property. Both men and women were