NORTH QUEENSLAND ETHNOGRAPHY — ROTH. 15 



during the wet season, when food is comparatively difficult to 

 obtain, and in the cold weather. 



Throughout North Queensland a very common method of 

 carrying a newly-born or comparatively young infant is in a 

 sheet of bark slung up to the mother's side. This sheet of bark, 

 derived from various timbers, is scorched on its inner surface so 

 as to produce a curling-over inwards at the sides ; this is slung 

 with twine, etc., over the mother's opposite shoulder and balanced 

 pretty carefully with the hand to prevent the youngster (lying 

 on an old net, some rags, or soft grass) from falling out at either 

 end. Where koolamons 2 " are met with, these may take the 

 place of the curled bark-sheets. In the Peninsula, and along 

 the East Coast, a slightly older baby may be carried in a dilly- 

 bag slung over the shoulders. As the child's age increases, it is 

 carried on the shoulders (Plate ii., fig. 2 ; Plate iii., figs. 1-3) or 

 flank, usually only on the former b} T the father, usually on the one 

 or other by the mother (Plate iii., fig. 4) : in the one case it 

 grasps its parent's forehead and neck with its little hands and 

 legs respectively, while in the latter it sits upon its mother's hip 

 supported in position by her protecting arm 



A mother never sings lullabies to her child, beyond a sort. of 

 droning humming sound to send it to sleep. The only thing she 

 does is to rock her baby in a basket dilh'-bag, bark trough, etc., 

 resting on the ground, or else swing it suspended from the branch 

 of a tree. She may slap it after the approved European fashion, 

 and sometimes frighten it by making grimaces, a favourite one 

 in the North-West Districts being produced by passing a string 

 through the nasal septum and drawing the nose upwards. 



27. I have not come across a single reliable example of the 

 existence of more than three generations at one and the same 

 time. 



Families may be large or small, or conspicuous by their 

 absence, but on the whole it would appear that the largest 

 number of children are born to those men with but one wife. 

 At Cape Bedford it is not uncommon for women to have six or 

 seven youngsters ; at the Bloomfield River five or six, one being 

 known to have had nine. Amongst the natives in the unsettled 

 districts it is naturally impossible to obtain reliable data as to 

 the numbers of children born, not only on account of the difficulty 

 of obtaining reliable interpreters, but also because of the general 

 dislike to speaking of those of their kith and kin who have gone 

 before. At any rate, amongst people living a natural existence 

 in their own environments, it is impossible that the birth rate 



83 Roth— Bull. 7— Sect. 62. 



