35 
The mode of beckoning, too, is peculiar. Instead of the up- 
ward and inward motion of the hand, as practised by the white 
man, the native does the reverse—the hand is moved downward 
and inward. 
Burial of the Dead.—The dead are interred* with great 
mourning ceremony. А native grave was seen in the Musgrave 
Ranges in which a woman had quite recently been buried. Close 
to the grave existed the place of wailing, where the mourners had 
made martyrs of themselves by inflicting wounds upon their 
bodies and had upturned the earth with their hands during their 
song of woe. All the signs of the performances were still 
preserved. The grave, in which the corpse had been buried a few 
feet below the surface, had been filled up with earth and a 
cireular mound erected over it to indicate the spot. On the 
summit of the mound the implements of the gin —a yamstick 
(“wanna”) and a cooleman (“mika ”)—had been stuck in the 
sand in an upright position, almost as a tombstone might be 
erected. (See Plate VI., fig. 1.) All the belongings of the 
gin, moreover, were hidden among the branches of the trees 
close by. A singular feature of the grave was that, on the 
northern side of the mound, a hole passing straight down to 
the body, and only loosely covered at the surface with a 
few branches of mulga, had been left open. The object of 
leaving this hole open I was not able to ascertain, but 
Professor Spencer subsequently informed me that a similar 
hole is left in graves in other parts of Central Australia to permit 
of the exit of the spirit of the dead person. In any case it would 
greatly facilitate the unearthing of the body by the wild dogs. 
No native was encountered within miles of this grave, although 
tracks, not many days old were plentiful. The superstitious 
beliefs and fear concerning the dead, it may be mentioned, are 
astounding. The fact that I had collected a native's skull, which 
had been disinterred by the dingos at Opparinna Spring, was 
quite sufficient to induce an old blackfellow and family camped 
close by to desert the locality in terror. No gin, moreover, is on 
any account allowed to even mention the name of either a 
deceased father or husband. + 
Tradition and Folk-lore.—Further, the country abounds in 
tradition —tradition in contradistinction to history. АП their 
complicated rites and customs have been handed down year after 
year without apparently conveying any real conception to the 
* Compare Spencer and Gillen: “The Native Tribes of Central Aus- 
tralia,” p. 497. 
t Compare the statement: ‘‘The name of the departed is by no means 
ever mentioned, not out of respect, but out of fear” (“The Folk-lore, 
Manners, Customs, and Languages of the S. A. Aborigines," p. 27) ; and, 
"This is not, however, strictly true as regards the Arunta Tribe” 
(Spencer and Gillen : op. cit., p. 498); also, E. C. Stirling: op. cit., p. 168. 
