PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION F. LZ 
Kurdaitcha puts a small pointing stick under the tongue which 
has the power of rendering the man oblivious of all that has 
happened. Before the victim comes to his senses the Kurdaitcha 
is far away, and when the former recovers he simply imagines 
that he has been asleep, and returns to camp quite ignorant of 
his serious condition. Before long, however, he sickens and 
dies unless there be some able medicine man at hand who can 
detect the fact that the mysterious sickness is caused by a 
Kurdaitcha. It is quite possible that the whole of the Kurdaitcha 
business is a myth, that is, so far as the actual use of the shoes 
for the purpose stated is concerned. There is no myth about 
the dislocation of the toe, and it is quite in keeping with the 
savage mind that there should be men who are willing to submit 
to what must be a painful ordeal simply to gain the kudos which 
attaches to anyone who can, to the satisfaction of his fellow- 
men, prove himself to be a wearer of the feather shoes. No- 
thing could be much more unsuitable for travelling over the rough 
eround of Central Australia than the latter; they could not even 
conceal the direction in which the wearer has walked, for a 
downturned blade of grass or an upturned stone is quite enough 
to reveal this to the native eye. Most of the shoes, again, 
are far too small to be used for the purpose, and as a matter of 
fact, are actually used for carrying about small sacred objects. 
The native has to be able to account for everything, and amongst 
the many myths which he has created to account for sickness 
and death this is probably one, and it is one which has become 
magnified and elaborated in course of time. There is no doubt 
that one native believes that another does really “go Kur- 
daitcha,” and not to be outdone he will submit to having his 
toe dislocated. So strong also is his power of imagination that, 
in course of time, he may even come to believe about himself 
what the other men believe. In all lkelihood it is a case of each 
man believing the other to be guilty, while in reality both of 
them are equally innocent. 
Very rarely a woman will go out to kill some one who has 
broken a tribal custom. This happens unknown to anyone save 
the woman and her husband, who decorates her body with bird’s 
down, and charms, by singing over it, a stick with which the 
woman is supposed to strike her enemy, the stick always enter- 
ing by the back of the neck, and breaking up into small pieces, 
which are very difficult to extract from the body. When the 
woman goes away she fixes one of her digging sticks upright in 
the ground, and ties on to it a bunch of the tail tips of the 
rabbit bandicoot, which she is accustomed to wear as an orna- 
ment; should she be seen and killed, then the tuft tumbles 
down ; the husband, who does not stir out of his camp while she 
is away, knows what has happened, burns his camp, leaving un- 
touched, however, the stick and tuft, and goes off to a distance. 
