Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/565

X from the tree. It is then taken off as a sheet of fibres, and being extended on the ground, is at least three times its former circumference. The sheets of fibre are about three inches thick, and look like coarse bright yellow tow. Ten men were now decorated with this fibre round their bodies, tied round their legs and arms, and placed as monstrous wigs on their heads. Their faces were further disguised by reverting the upper and lower lips by cords made of the fibre tied behind the head, thereby showing the teeth and gums, and the effect was hideous. Two pieces of bark were now stripped, each about four feet in length, by fifteen inches at one end and nine at the other. The ten men now knelt down in a row on the southern edge of the cleared space, and about six or seven feet distant from, and parallel with, the row of holes, which faced them. The kneeling men were shoulder to shoulder; the man at either end had one of the pieces of bark in his hands, and in front of him a small mound of earth raised up in such a position that he could strike it with the concave side of his piece of bark.

All being now ready, including the new bull-roarer, my