Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/652

626 nearly half a century of occupation of Gippsland by the white men, one of the Headmen said to me, "If a woman were to see these things or hear what we tell the boys, I would kill her." Whether this would now be really done I cannot say—perhaps not—but it might be, and I am certain that, at the time, the old man meant what he said.

The two Headmen, and the Mulla-mullung, who by virtue of his office had, in addition to the charcoal powder, a band of white drawn across his face from ear to ear, now began to uncover the Tutnurring at one end of the row. He seemed to be in a deep sleep; and the old men, raising him up into a sitting posture, made curious grunting noises, for the purpose, as one of them told me afterwards, of wakening him. He, being placed sitting on the couch of leaves in front of the fire, had his blanket drawn over his shoulders and head like a hood. In this manner all the boys were roused up, and seated in a row, having then additional rugs drawn over them all, so as to screen them from the cold. These boys, having lived so much among the whites, were thought by the old men to have departed too much from the good old ancestral virtues, and it was therefore necessary that the white man's influence should, if possible, be counteracted. It was thought that the lads had become selfish, and no longer willing to share that which they obtained by their own exertions, or had given to them, with their friends. The boys being all seated in a row, at each end of which was one of the Headmen, the doctor proceeded to exercise his magical functions. He stooped over the first boy, and muttering some words which I could not catch, he kneaded the lad's stomach with his hands. This he did to each one successively, and by it the Kurnai supposed the "greediness" of the youth would be expelled.

It is at this time that the Tutnurring are invested with the belt of manhood, the kilt, the armlets, forehead-band, nose-peg, necklace, in fact with the full male dress.

From this time the youths are constantly supervised and