Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/257

 without any violence. In a few rare instances, I have known the females to be forcibly stolen away, but hostilities then, invariably, ensued between the injured tribe and the tribe of the aggressors. None of the women bore those frightful scars and cicatrices, resulting from the blows of their inhuman masters, which scarcely any female in the tribes south of Sydney is exempt from.

It is remarkable, that whilst a great proportion of the men of a tribe are unprovided with &lsquo;gins,&rsquo;y numbers of them are allowed to retain two, and even three. In other respects, a rigid equality is preserved among the different members of the tribe; thus, if a pair of trowsers, handkerchief, or coat, be given to any black, he is allowed to keep it a certain time, and then it is worn by the others in succession until it is destroyed, or they become tired of it.

As the boys of a tribe approach the age of puberty, a grand ceremony, to inaugurate them into the privileges of manhood, takes place. This ceremony is entirely different at the MacLeay and Nambucca rivers, to what it probably is in other parts of the colony, for the natives there do not strike out the front tooth as elsewhere. When a tribe has determined on initiating their youths into these rites, they send messengers to the surrounding tribes of blacks, to invite them to be present on the occasion. These messengers or ambassadors appear to be distinguished by having their head-bands