Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/42

37 We once had occasion to remove the whole of a blackfellows' oven; it contained fully three thousand cubic yards of soil. During its removal we exhumed twenty-eight skeletons This large number was a matter of considerable surprise to us, but on making due inquiry amongst the very old natives, we discovered that they were the remains of some of the smallpox victims who had died during the earlier stages of the epidemic, when sepulture was yet being given to those who succumbed to the loathsome plague.

When men of consequence and consideration, or young people, die, there is much mourning and grief in the tribe, and amongst those related by blood to the deceased. The mourning takes the shape of very violent physical suffering. At those times these (the relatives) score their backs and arms (even their faces do not always escape) with red hot brands, until they become hideous with ulcers. These ulcers stand them in good stead, however, in this way: if their grief is not sufficiently acute to induce a genuine cry, they have only to come against the ulcers roughishly, when they will have cause enough for any quantity cf lachrymosity. At sunrise and sundown the one who is principally bereaved begins to cry, or howl, in a long, monotonous kind of yodling tone, which is taken up by old and young. At first it is begun very low, but gradually swells into such volumes of uncouth, excruciating sound, as is heard under no other circumstances, and, we think, amongst no other people. The mourning cries at a good large wake are considerable, and not by any means pleasing, to the generality of mankind; still, they are as music of the spheres, when compared to the hellish din created by a camp full of mourners.