130 White Quartz Pebbles. 



to manhood he was given a white stone which might never be 

 shown to women or it would be fatal. For making rain the 

 custom was to select a young girl, a vein in her wrist was 

 opened from which a pint of blood was taken. The black 

 doctor had with him a quantity of water-washed crystalised 

 white pebbles. One of these was steeped in the blood for 

 some time, then all was tied in pieces of bark and consigned 

 to one of the deep water-holes in which the Blacks believed 

 that Nutchie, better known as the " devil-devil," existed. 

 After this, rain might be certainly expected. It may here 

 also be mentioned that crystal-gazing was known to the 

 Tasmanians. The Australians' Coradgee Stone was care- 

 fully wrapped up and concealed in the hair, and it was fatal 

 for a woman to see it ; it was usually a clear quartz crystal, 

 sometimes a white stone. In Melanesia there is a curious 

 custom when a man dies. A speech is made to him, in 

 which he is entrusted with messages for others departed (as 

 his ghost has not yet left the village) and he is instructed to 

 bear all the news of the place, and told who is to share the 

 dainties of the funeral feast in the land he is going to. Five 

 days after, the ghost is made to understand that it is high 

 time he was off. Two of his friends take up their positions 

 in his house, a white stone in each hand which they clack 

 together till the ghost gets so worried by the noise that he 

 passes out.* In far distant lands we still come upon traces 

 ■of the superstition about white pebbles. The wife of a 

 missionary told me that when her husband was working 

 among the Gonds she went to see a native funeral and was 

 surprised to see the mourners throwing pebbles into the 

 grave. D- W. F. Gumming said that he found several 

 graves strewn with white pebbles near the temple of Deir, 

 the capital of Nubia, above the second cataract of the Nile. 



"In Guatemala they placed polished stones in the 

 mouth of the dying to supply a permanent abode for the 

 ■soul. In New South Wales the blacks gave each novitiate at 

 manhood ceremonials a white stone or quartz crystal as an 



* Florence Coombe, Many Sided Melanesia, 1911. 



