Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/632

606 will be left a narrow strip of neutral ground over which neither party will cross.

The party who sent the challenge travels into the country of the other tribe. In one case the challenging party travelled some seventy miles, that is to say, some thirty miles into the enemy's country. The radius from which people came to that Dora was fifty miles, and about three thousand attended, it being on the mainland opposite Frazer's Island.

When the two tribes are travelling to meet each other they have a practice for several days before they meet of burning the grass and everything they can set fire to, as a defiance to each other. The bull-roarer called Pundunda was used after the fight, the boys and the Quonmies going into the thick scrub, within hearing of the camp, and sounding it. The women, when they hear this, run away out of the camp, being told that if they remain and listen to it they will lose their hearing, and if they look back they will become blind. The noise is not continued long. The women are not allowed to see the Pundunda. After the fight and the corrobborees which follow it there is the capturing of women, which has been already described.

When the meeting is over and the people return to their homes, the boys are not placed under any restriction as to the food which they may or may not eat, that is to say by reason of the Dora, but there are general rules which prevent the younger men from eating certain articles of food, which are reserved for the old men. For instance, boys are not allowed to eat emu eggs, nor even to touch them, but they must give them to the old men.

Although the youths on returning from the Dora are accounted as men, they are not permitted to take wives until their beards are grown. Should a youth attempt to take his promised wife before that time, he would be told, "Go away! What do you want with a wife, you beardless boy?"

To the southward of the tribes whose Dora I have described, there are those tribes of which I have taken the Kaiabara as the example. Their ceremonies were held