Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/354

324 NOTES ON THE ABORIGINES OF ROEBUCK BAY, WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

BY ADA JANET PEGGS.

(Read at Meeting, 20th June, 1903).

[The following paper consists of extracts selected from letters written by Mrs. J. A. Peggs, [née Tabor), to Mrs. C. J. Tabor between the years 1898 and 1901. Mrs. Peggs acquired her taste for anthropology and its kindred sciences by attending the meetings of the Folk-Lore Society, and when upon her marriage she accompanied her husband to Roebuck Bay, she began a regular series of letters home, descriptive of the manners and customs of the native races with whom she came into contact. These notes are here printed as received, without addition, alteration, arrangement, or criticism by myself. Mrs. Peggs, who is now in England, has read the manuscript and made some trifling corrections.

The plate (XV.) of the principal objects exhibited at the meeting, all of which have been in actual use, is taken from a photograph by myself of the articles which are now in my private collection. (They may be seen upon application.) The photographs of tribesmen and tribal marks were forwarded at different times with the letters (Plates X-XIV.) ]

Roebuck Bay, W. A., December 12th, 1898. Although first impressions are not always the truest, still what strikes one as strange on first coming into a new country may by a closer association pass unnoticed, or become so familiar as to be part of one's life, and lose all significance. Therefore, just so much as I have seen since we have been here I am jotting down for you, and also some odd bits of information that I have gained. It may or may not be of