BY R. ETIIERIDGE, JUNE. 549 



I will now give the remainder of Mr. East's interesting state- 

 ment in his own words : — 



" Mr. Tom Coward, now of Adelaide, but formerly of the 

 Queensland and South Australian Police, tells me that the slippers 

 properly belong to the tribes occupying the inland slope of the 

 Queensland Cordillera, and their principal use is to disguise tracks 

 when ' wife hunting.' The abductor must conceal himself in the 

 neighbourhood of the camp, but once he has obtained his bride 

 speed is the urgent need of the moment. My own informants — 

 the native black trackers — say they are used to disguise tracks 

 and that rain-makers also sometimes use them. On all points, I 

 have come to the conclusion that their use is not general, and 

 hence can have no great ethnological significance. 



" Mr. Coward states that the feathers are stuck together with 

 a pitchy substance similar to that used for fastening spear heads. 

 (This in Central Australia is obtained by burning spinifex and 

 digging up the pitch from the sand around the roots.) 



" The pair of slippers or ' Cooditchies ' (as I have spelled it) in 

 our Museum are not made in this manner, but are built at the 

 soles by tying the tufts of feathers together with a white string 

 apparently the same as that used by the natives of Stuart's Creek 

 (L. Eyre) in the manufacture of aprons. (These aprons are made 

 from the fibres of the cotton bush mixed with human hair.) The 

 upper part is made of netting formed by twisting human hair 

 with a brown fibre which resembles cocoanut fibre in appearance. 



" The collection of a sufhcient quantity of netting to make these 

 slippers must have occupied a very long time, and is a valid reason 

 why they are not common or in general use. 



" In conclusion, I would suggest that the primary use of the 

 slippers is not to hide tracks, but simply to disguise the direction 

 in which the traveller went. The stony tablelands of Central 

 Australia and the rocky ranges reveal few- signs of a nature which 

 even a blackfellow can trace as footprints, but at intervals a river 

 channel must be crossed, and here the Aboriginal is confronted 

 with an obstacle which in other countries can be turned to 

 advantage. The Finke, Goyder, Hamilton, Szc, are typical of the 



