Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/735

XI quartz crystals, which could be only shown to the several Headmen.

This bull-roarer is kept by the principal Headman, and is believed to have special power. If seen by a woman, she is killed; if a man were to show it to her, both would be killed. The same penalty attaches to the revealing of the Kabugabul-bajeru.

The message-stick No. 12 in Fig. 44 is from the Yakunbura tribe of the Dawson River, Queensland. One end is coloured blue, the other red; the notches are to remind the messenger of the various parts of his message, and the lines marked across the longitudinal one are the days on which he has travelled. The persons to whom the stick is sent know from them the number of days it will take them to travel to the place from which the messenger has come.

A message-stick from the Mundainbura tribe of the Durham Downs in Queensland is shown on Fig. 44, No. 11. The notches shown on the right-hand edge represent a number of men of the Kurgilla sub-class. The two rows of dots represent men respectively of the Kunbe and Wungu sub-classes. The notches on the left-hand edge represent men of the Kuburu sub-class. The message with it was to invite these people to a corrobboree.

I sent a sketch of the stick to a valued correspondent, Mr. R. Christison of Lammermoor Station, with a request that he would ascertain what the men of the Dalebura tribe, living with him, could make of it. The Dalebura tribe has the same sub-classes as the Mundainbura tribe. In reply he informed me that his blacks made out the stick to mean, that the right-hand notches represent the Karagilla sub-class; the left-hand the Kuburu sub-class, and the dots represent a wish to meet.

This statement shows that the notches in the right and left-hand edges have a definite meaning as the Kurgilla and Kuburu sub-classes respectively. In the Kuinmurbura tribe, meetings for initiation ceremonies are called by means of message-sticks.