Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/128

 and others, observed them at other places. They appear to have been more numerous on the northern and western coasts than elsewhere, but to have been elaborated with greater care at a distance from the shore than close to it.

The rite of induction of young men has been alluded to as witnessed by Phillip's officers in Sydney. There, as in districts far northward, and as in some of the tribes in South Australia, the outward sign testifying the admission was the loss of a tooth. A place was set apart for the ceremony, and seldom changed. Women and children never visited it. The occupation of it by white men confounded the natives as much as the destruction of St. Peter's or Notre Dame would astound Romans or Frenchmen. A raised oval or circular ridge inclosed a space of about eight hundred superficial feet. It had but one inlet, though the mound was but a foot in height. Another sacred symbol was a mounded cross, made similarly of earth. All around the space were trees whose bark was graved with marks and patterns of winding lines, or of angular figures enclosed one within another. Strange dances were exhibited, which in various order signified that in the chase and in war the young men were to assume new functions. The dog, the kangaroo, the hostile tribe, were to be subject to their prowess. Strange articles were shown and songs were taught which no woman or child could see or hear. Even a special call (or cooey), with its response was taught, to be used only out of hearing of the uninitiated. Seated on the shoulders of one man, the boy submitted to the operation by which his tooth was knocked out by a blow from a stone on an instrument applied to the tooth.

Usually the young men spent some subsequent weeks in the mountains apart from the general tribe under the tutelage of esteemed warriors, perfected their memories as to the rites they had witnessed, and gave assurance of observing secrecy. The loss of the front teeth was noticed by Dampier in 1699, and by Flinders in the present century, in tribes where circumcision was practised. But on the east coast the first ceremony existed, and the latter was unknown. Many tribes of the interior and on the south and west coasts adopted neither practice, but all had cere-