36 AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 



amicable separation does not create any ill feeling between the parties, as the 

 woman is always kind to her first husband without causing any jealousy on the 

 part of the second. Such transactions, although lawful, may not be approved of 

 by the woman's relatives, and she is liable to be speared by her brother. 



A single woman or widow belonging to a chief's family, can, with his 

 consent, many another chief, or his son, by simply sitting down in his wuurn 

 beside his wife, who cannot prevent the match. But the first wife is always the 

 mistress. 



A young chief who cannot get a wife, and falls in love with one belonging 

 to a chief who has more than two, can, with her consent, challenge the husband 

 to single combat, and, if he defeats him, he makes her his legal wife; but the 

 defeated husband never afterwards speaks to her. 



A man falling in love with a young woman who will not consent to marry 

 him, tries to get a lock of her hair, and, should he obtain it, he covers it with fat 

 and red clay, and carries it about with him for one year. The knowledge of this 

 so depresses the woman that she pines away. Should she die, her relatives and 

 friends attribute her death to his having cast a spell over her, and they punish 

 the man severely, and keep up enmity against him for a long time. In consequence 

 of this superstition, the natives always burn their superfluous hair in a fire 

 outside their dwellings ; never in the domestic fire, as the remains of it would 

 get among their food. 



When a wife treats her husband with such persistent disrespect or unkind- 

 ness as to make him wish to get quit of her, he casts a spell over her in the 

 following manner. While she is asleep he cuts off a lock of her hair, and ties it 

 to the bone hook of his ' spear thrower,' and covers it with a coating of gum. 

 Early next morning he goes to a neighbouring tribe, and stays with them. 

 At the first great meeting of the tribes he gives the 'spear thrower' to a friend, 

 who sticks it upright before the camp fire every night, and when it falls over he 

 considers that a sign that his wife is dead. But until he is assured by a 

 messenger that such is the case, he will not return to his tribe. In the 

 meantime, as the wife has not been legally separated from her husband, she 

 cannot marry ; and as she is constantly subjected to the sneers and taunts of her 

 friends, she idtimately visits her husband, apologizes for her conduct, and brings 

 him home. As an earnest of reconciliation and mutual confidence the spear 

 thrower is broken and thrown into a water-hole. 



After marriage, the women are compelled to do all the hard work of erecting 



