398 i!i-;(;oHDS of the Australian museum. 



resting on cross-pieces supported on the forked extremities of 

 posts some ten or twelve feet high fixed firmly into the ground. 

 Tlie corpse previously stabbed in the loins, from which the putrid 

 matter subsequently trickled out, was laid upon this platform face 

 upwards : it swelled a good deal for the next few danyn but soon 

 became sun-dried, and was then left totally exposed for from 

 three to five months according to the state of the season. With- 

 out any intermediate ground-burial, it would now be taken down 

 and squeezed head foremost through the aperture cut for it in the 

 hollow tree chosen. Previous to the exposure on the plat- 

 form, the hands and feet of the deceased would occasionally be 

 eaten, and especially would this be the case with one killed in 

 tribal warfare. Females used to be ground-buried straight away 

 after death, and left there, though now and again a woman's 

 corpse, wrapped up in bark, would be seen carried around for 

 months from camp to camp, though with what object is now 

 unknown. 



At Rockhampton and at Broadsound, when an infant 

 died, the mother would tie up one or both of the dried tiny hands 

 in a dilly-bag and carry it about with her long after the burial 

 had taken place. On the Keppel Islands'"^ in addition to tree- 

 butt burial, rock-shelter graves were employed, the front lower 

 edges of such shelters being ledged in with small pieces of rock. 

 In one of such caves, on North Keppel, well-hidden from cursory 

 observation by growing brush-wood, in a space about four and a 

 half feet wide, and three feet from front to back, I found the closely 

 packed remains of at least eight adults and two infants : the latter 

 weie enveloped in bark contained each within a dilly-bag, while 

 the bones of the adults, except the crania and maxilhv, which 

 had been left exposed and separate, were wrapped up in a fishing- 

 net. Scattered here and there among the debris and sand were 

 dolls'^l On this same North Island I also came across a dilly- 

 bag, containing the remains of a piccaninny wrapped up in bark, 

 hung up with twine from a tree branch. Some of the inhabitants 

 of the smaller islands about Broadsound are said^" to have taken 

 their dead out to sea in a canoe and thrown them over-boai'd. 



13. Amongst the Brisbane District blacks, variations in burial 

 -customs'^ depended upon whether the deceased were adults or 



'''^ Now (1906) deToid of natives. 



o Bull. 4-Sect. 11 (h). 



™ On the authority of Mr. W. H. Flowers, late of Torilla. 



■?' Tlie above jiarticulars were taken down between 1900 and 1902 in the 

 coin-se of conversations with Mr. Tom Petrie. There is now no survi- 

 vor of the Brisbane blacks. 



