18 



her own age at not less than eighty, which I think is not at 

 all improbable. 



If this be approximately the date of the epidemic of 

 which Mrs. Karpeny was a witness as a child it was, as we 

 shall see, some years later than that which we must assign 

 to the one of which Mr. Taplin speaks in his account of the 

 Narrinyeri, to which I shall refer directly. But Mrs. Kar- 

 peny was quite certain that the sickness of which she spoke 

 was the only one that occurred during her lifetime, nor before 

 that occurrence had she ever seen any blacks marked with 

 the disease, though afterwards there were many such. 



This old black spoke of the coming of a strong west 

 wind which made the reeds all tremble, and this, she said, 

 was taken as a sure sign that the sickness was coming — which 

 it did very quickly. In making this statement, which she 

 repeated two or three times with great earnestness, she held 

 out her two hands and made them quiver. With much gesture 

 she described how the faces of those affected with the disease 

 came out all over spots, and how that many died of it, including 

 many children. She herself escaped, but her aunt, who is still 

 living/ 8 ) and who, she says, is considerably older than herself, 

 caught the disease and has her face marked. She told 

 of the remedies they sought, one being young reed shoots 

 pounded and administered from a mussel (Unio) shell used 

 as a spoon ; another was the boiled leaves of mallee eucalypts 

 gathered in the scrub. She also mentioned the use of other 

 plants which I could not identify, but which she said she 

 could point out. Nothing, however, did any good. Several 

 of these statements were repeated two or three times, and 

 always with adherence to the same version. 



When asked whether they buried those who had died 

 of the sickness she said, "No ; we smoked 'em/' and that led 

 me to ask her about the ante-burial rites of the Narrinyeri. 

 Her replies conformed to the account given by Mr. Taplin, 

 but she gave more explicit information about the subsequent 

 and final interment, stating that the bones were put into the 

 ground two or three years after they had been finally placed 

 on the platforms. 



She had never been as far up the river as Swanport, and 

 knew nothing of the burials there. 



Bearing in mind the frequent absence at that locality of 

 the cranium from the other parts of the skeleton, I asked 

 Mrs. Karpeny whether, in her young days, it was a common 

 custom to convert the skulls into drinking vessels. She said 

 it was, and that she herself had often carried two of them. 



(8) Since these lines were written this old woman has died 

 She will be again referred to. 



