23 



occasion a youth was accused of an intrigue with one of his 

 father's wives. As the guilty youth was absent from the 

 main camp, the council of old men decided to kill his tribal 

 brother for the offence. The condemned youth prepared to 

 defend himself and, armed with spears and spear-thrower, 

 was confronting several similarly-armed old men when I 

 intervened. Had I not done so I have no doubt he would 

 have been killed. Eventually, after an absence of some weeks, 

 the real offender arrived at the camp. By this time the anger 

 of the old men had cooled and a mere battle of words resulted. 



Defence of Maeital Rights. 



More usually in such a case the settlement of the quarrel 

 lies with the injured husband and the offending person. 

 Several such quarrels which I witnessed were fought out 

 between the two men primarily concerned. Each combatant 

 was armed only with the club ("diama") and the large shield 

 ("iweenu"), used only for this purpose of hand-to-hand 

 fighting. None of the combats ended fatally, though both 

 parties suffered severely from blows on the head. In each 

 case the husband, who was much the older man, had dis- 

 tinctly the advantage in the fight, and concluded the episode 

 by soundly thrashing the erring woman. 



During these quarrels the partisans of either side — 

 apparently old men versus young men — took their spears and 

 spear-throwers in hand and stood about watching the fight, 

 but did not attempt to interfere. 



Weapons, Implements, and Utensils. 



The Wororra appear to be a very primitive tribe, to 

 judge from the paucity of manufactured implements in use; 

 these, with the exception of the spear and spear-thrower, are 

 very few and crudely fashioned. 



The "lembulya," or stone tomahawk (fig. 1), is made 

 from a piece of basalt, very roughly ground to an edge, and 

 inserted in a bent or cloven stick handle in the usual fashion. 



No manufactured knife is used. The "mardi," or stone 

 knife, is merely a natural flake of stone, to which no handle 

 is attached. 



A hole is bored in such an implement as a spear-thrower 

 or a bull-roarer simply with a sharp point of a stone. 



To sharpen a stick the stick is ground to a point on a 

 rough stone. 



The club is of two kinds : the "dia," or smaJl club used for 

 administering the final blow to a wounded kangaroo, and the 

 "diama," or large club (fig. 2) used in hand-to-hand fighting. 



