248 , Macteay Memorirat Voie. 
The largest is beautifully made of close rushwork, with a string handle, and is 
very much akin to a basket figured by Smyth* from the Burdekin Tribe. It is two 
feet ten and a half inches long (Pl. xxxiv. fig. 7). The rush or flag appears to have 
been split into very thin strips, representing the “staking” in ordinary now-a-days 
basket work. These are held in position by intertwining with them the horizontal 
bars or “siding.” The groundwork of the bag is stained indian red as usual, 
and relieved by four equidistant encircling narrow bands, which with the apex 
and portions of the mouth edges are stained a fine orange yellow. On what may be 
presumed to be the front of the bag the spaces between the orange cross-bands are 
covered with rectangular or hour-glass shaped figures, five in each zone. Those of 
the top zone are rectangular and white; in the second zone the two left-hand and the 
extreme right-hand figures are hour-glass shaped and white, the two intermediate 
ones being rectangular and black. In the third zone from the mouth, all are hour- 
glass shaped and white. The figures of the bottom zone are all rectangular and 
coloured like those of the second tier. 
Another basket, rather less in length, but of similar construction, is uncoloured, 
except at the base or apex, where there are three narrow transverse bands of indian 
red picked out with pipeclay dots. 
A third basket, only nine inches long, and quite similar to the foregoing, is 
simply staimed red without transverse bands of any kind. 
All three baskets have string handles, from one end of the mouth only, and 
their general durability is remarkable. In figuring a very beautifully made basket of 
this description Lumbholtz says they are sometimes ornamented with stripes and dots 
of blood taken from the maker’s own arm.t 
Other baskets of a more open meshwork are constructed by forming the 
“staking” of five untwisted pieces to each upright or stake, with the “siding” in 
one case consisting of a bi- or tri-twist (Pl. xxx. fig. 7), or of two or three 
untwisted strands (Pl. xxxu. fig. 8). These baskets are either uncoloured or 
covered with scattered red blotches. They vary in size from seven and a-half to 
nine and a-half inches long. 
The principle of manufacture is quite similar to that of a Tasmanian bag figured 
by Ling Roth,} consisting of a “series of upright pieces of reed held partially in 
position by means of two pieces of twisted fibre, which two are again twisted into 
each other in such a manner as to enclose at every twist one of the upright reeds.” 
* Aborigines of Victoria, 1878, I. p. 346, f. 161, a and 6. 
+ Amongst Cannibals, 1890, p. 194. 
+ Aborigines of Tasmania, 1890, p. IX. f. 2, and f. 3. 
