426 K. H. MATHEWS. 



off. It was owing to this burying in the dry sand that the 

 stump found by me was preserved from rotting away in so 

 long a time. 



Let us go back to the boora or larger ring and again 

 start westerly along the path. Owing to the soil on each 

 hand being very sandy, there were no traces of the usual 

 raised earthen figures, or of the yowan patterns cut in the 

 surface of the ground, all of which had been erased by the 

 constant depasturing of stock. On nearing the end of the 

 rocky ridge already mentioned, my guides drew my atten- 

 tion to a number of gum trees which had been marked 

 with a tomahawk, but the devices had grown completely 

 off the bark of some, whilst others were so indefinite, that 

 I did not think them worth copying. On the end of the 

 ridge, the loose boulders and smaller stones had been care- 

 fully gathered off the pathway, and piled either in separate 

 heaps or around the butt of adjacent trees or stumps. This 

 was done to make the track smooth, so that it would not 

 hurt the feet of the men when walking along it to and from 

 the goonaba. 



I noticed the boles or tall stumps of several large saplings 

 of ironbark and gum, the tops of which had been cut off at 

 heights varying from five to eight feet from the ground — 

 some being on one side of the path and some on the other. 

 One of these stumps was marked in a peculiar way. It 

 was ironbark, about nine inches in diameter, and five feet 

 high, standing on the left side of the path, about twelve 

 chains from the larger ring. A mortise, two feet in length 

 and two inches and a half wide, was cut right through the 

 bole — the lower end of the mortise being about a foot and 

 a half from the ground. The plane of this narrow cleft 

 through the stump was parallel to the pathway. The 

 natives said that one of the gum trees near the track had 

 originally contained an imitation of an eaglehawk's nest, 



