Page:The Euahlayi Tribe.djvu/74

 of his nose when going to a strange camp, so that he will not smell strangers easily. The blacks say the smell of white people makes them sick; we in our arrogance had thought it the other way on.

Swansdown, shells, and woven strands of opossum's hair are valuable, and guarded as such in the boondoorr, which is sometimes kept for safety in the wirreenun's Minggah.

Having dealt with the supernatural part of a wirreenun's training, which argues cunning in him and credulity in others, I must get to his more natural remedies.

Snakebite they cure by sucking the wound and cauterising it with a firestick. They say they suck out the young snakes which have been injected into the bitten person.

For headaches or pains which do not yield to the vegetable medicine, the wirreenuns tie a piece of opossum's hair string round the sore place, take one end in their mouths, and pull it round and round until it draws blood along the cord. For rheumatic pains in the head or in the small of the back and loins they often bind the places affected with coils of opossum hair cord, as people do sometimes with red knitting-silk.

The blacks have many herbal medicines, infusions of various barks, which they drink or wash themselves with, as the case may be.

Various leaves they grind on their dayoorl-stones, rubbing themselves with the pulp. Steam baths they make of pennyroyal, eucalyptus, pine, and others.

The bleeding of wounds they stanch with the down of birds.

For irritations of the skin they heat dwarf saltbush twigs and put the hot ends on the irritable parts.

After setting a broken limb they put grass and bark round it, then bind it up.

For swollen eyes they warm the leaves of certain trees and hold them to the affected parts, or make an infusion of Budtha leaves and bathe the eyes in it.

For rheumatic pains a fire is made, Budtha twigs laid