Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/35

30 upper front teeth knocked out. This operation is performed when the boys arrive at the age of puberty. For three months after this torturing ordeal the youths are not permitted to look upon a woman young or old, as the sight of one during this probation would be the means of entailing countless misfortunes, such as the withering of the limbs, loss of eyesight, and in fact general decrepitude.

Youths, prior to the extraction of the teeth, dare not eat of emu flesh, wild turkey, swan, geese, or black duck, or of the eggs of any of these birds. Did they infringe this law in the slightest possible manner, their hair would become prematurely grey, and the flesh of their limbs would waste away and shrivel up. Any members of their tribes having malformations of limb or body are pointed out as living examples of the dire fate of those who knowingly commit a breach of this aboriginal law. These cripples that are thus put forth as living illustrations have had it impressed upon their minds from their earliest youth that their respective infirmities are entirely due to such indiscretions, and this has been impressed upon their minds so persistently, they have not a doubt on the subject, therefore give implicit credence to the story.

Having such dread penalties continually placed before them, the various kinds of tabooed food are carefully avoided by the aboriginal youth; thus the full-grown men and women of the tribe come in for many of the good things, which they would not, but for this wise decree. Nevertheless, the makers of this law were wise in their day and generation, and thereby conferred a grand benefit upon