646 NGARRABUL AND OTHER ABORIGINAL TRIBES, 



absence from camp some of the poison is sprinkled on his rug. 

 When he returns to sleep, it is his last eternal slumber. He dies 

 "all puffed out." My informant could tell me nothing more 

 about this lethal drug. Even the police, he said, are mystified. 

 Current rumour certainly in this district ascribes the death of 

 aboriginals to some mysterious poison employed by hostile natives. 

 It is said that in earlier days also the natives were in great terror 

 of being thus put to death by revengeful Blacks. 



As regards ritual or ceremonial and "ornamental" surgery, 

 I saw no natives with the septum nasi pierced. The Ngarrabul 

 Blacks told me that neither circumcision nor knocking out the 

 incisor teeth was practised in their tribe, nor was that remarkable 

 rite, urethrotomy or mutilation of the penis, described amongst 

 other Australian people. Scarification of the body (erroneously 

 termed "tattooing"), however, was performed after attaining 

 adult years. It was entirely optional, and members of either sex 

 could be so adorned if they felt disposed — an advantage that 

 some at least did not avail themselves of. The form and distri- 

 bution of the lines, etc., made by this operation differed materially 

 in different tribes, and travellers say that many tribes could be 

 thus easily distinguished by the bodily markings of their mem- 

 bers.* I saw an old Oban native with extensive cicatrices upon 

 the skin of his chest (back and front), but not upon his abdomen. 

 One vertical scar lay over the upper sternum. On either side of 

 the chest in front, below the level of this one, were four scars; 

 those on the left being almost horizontal, while those on the right 

 were shorter and directed obliquely downwards and inw^ards, 

 thus : — 



I The scars were all pale and atrophic, and neither 



^ upon these nor on those resulting from injuries was 



^ ^=1:^ there any elevation of false keloid. In fact we 



are told that wounds require to be subjected to 



special measures to ensure the formation of such cicatrical over- 



* Bulmer in Biough Smythe's 'Aborigines of Victoria,' Vol. i., p. 295. 

 J. M. Davis, ibid. Vol. ii., p. 313. 



