GROUP DIVISIONS AND INITIATION CEREMONIES. 245 



period, the novitiates are carried a short distance from the camp, 

 and placed lying down on bushes thickly strewn on the ground, 

 and rugs spread over them. A man then sits down beside each 

 novice, and commences pulling out the hairs of his beard, under 

 his arms, and from the pubes. When one man gets tired he is 

 replaced by another. The men of the novitiate's own tribe do 

 not take part in the operation ; this duty devolving upon the men 

 of the different strange tribes present at the meeting ; and the 

 pluckers are the potential brothers-in-law of the novice assigned 

 to them. Some of the head men of each tribe sit on the ground 

 near by, directing the proceedings. The hair plucked from each 

 novice is carefully kept by itself, and is given into the charge of 

 one of his relatives in the same manner that the extracted tooth 

 is disposed of in other tribes. When the plucking of the hair has 

 been completed, the novices are raised to their feet by their 

 guardians and other men, amid the shouts of all present. Each 

 graduate is then painted, and invested with the usual regalia of a 

 man of the tribe. 



The novices are then cautioned against divulging the details of 

 what they have passed through to any except the initiated. They 

 are now taken to where the women are encamped, where they are 

 met by their mothers and other female relatives, who light fires 

 to the windward of them, enveloping them all in a dense smoke, 

 caused by placing green grass, bushes or weeds on the burning 

 wood. The graduates have to pass through the ordeal of the 

 Kuranda at not less than two or three different meetings of the 

 tribes for that purpose, before they can be admitted to full 

 membership, and be permitted to take a wife. 



Circumcision. — This rite is observed in more than a third of 

 the entire Barkunjee nation, its south-eastern limits being repre- 

 sented by the line from A to B on the map. Mr. E. J. Eyre 1 

 gives an account of the ceremony of circumcision in the district 

 of Adelaide, which took place when the novices were from twelve 



1 Journals of Expeditions of Discovery in Central Australia, (London 

 1845), Vol. ii., pp. 333 - 335. 



