Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/498

472 a large fire close to the spot, and went back to the camp. The next morning a few armed blacks went to the spot, and surrounded the stage, while one going very gently on tiptoe, and kneeling down, examined the smoothed ground. If he saw nothing, he rose very cautiously, and looking round him uttered some half-stifled growls about the ghost of the dead. Then biting some grass and muttering some words to the ghost, he cast it on the fire, and after making this up, he and his companions returned to the camp. At sunset they would again visit the stage and examine the ground for marks, and this might be done for several days, until they found some mark or track on it. This they believed to have been made by the ghost of the dead man, and from the appearance of the mark or track they could tell whom it represents. For instance if the track were that of a dingo, and therefore Malera-banbe, they would soon make out who the Malera-banbe man was who had killed him. They say that a track made by a dingo could not deceive them, for it would be deeply impressed on the soil, while an impression made by the ghost would be like a shadow.

Having ascertained who had killed him, they take the body down from the stage, and breaking it up with a tomahawk, the pieces are enveloped with twigs, and enclosed within bark stripped from a sapling, and fastened by sewing opossum skin round it. The mother or sister of the deceased takes charge of it, and sometimes the remains are carried about for as long as eighteen months, until the matter has been settled by the offender being punished. Then the remains, bark covering and all, are put into some hollow tree in the country of the deceased. All the trees at the place are ring-barked where the remains are deposited, and boughs are placed in their forks. If there is no fork, they drive two stakes into the ground and heap up boughs between them.

There are exceptions to this rule, for where no large hollow tree can be found, the remains are buried in the ground, on some sandhill, the grave being filled with decayed wood, so that at any time they can remove them. Two stakes are driven into the ground at the head of the grave,