140 R. H. MATHEWS. 
As the young fellows are generally eager to participate in the 
plays enacted in the bush, they leave their women at the new 
camp, and start out to join the kooringal, having received 
directions respecting the locality from some of the old men at 
the camp, or perhaps some of these men escort them to the 
ngoorang. On the way out they paint their bodies with charcoal 
and grease, and on nearing the ngoorang, one of them climbs a 
tree and shouts in a peculiar manner, which is answered by the 
kooringal. The latter then gather up their weapons, and 
having mustered all the novices, take them to the quarter from 
which the man’s voice has been heard, where they find the fresh 
arrivals, who are called goory, sitting down in a group, with 
bushes in their hands. The kooringal place the boys standing in 
a row looking at the new men, round whom they form a semi- 
circle, dancing and shaking their weapons.!' The heads of the 
boys are now bent down by their guardians, and they are taken 
back to the biinbiils—the goory joining the kooringal. These 
arrivals at the ngoorang generally take place late in the after- 
noon, or early in the morning. 
At the close of the day all the men and boys camp at the same 
place as the night before, and similar pantomimic performances 
are indulged in. In the morning all hands are called up by the 
old men, and radiate away from the ngoorang as on the previous 
morning. On this occasion they do not go to the same place as 
before, but each little mob selects a fresh camp at which to light 
their fire and remain till morning. After breakfast another cor- 
roboree ground is cleared, at a different place to that used yester- 
day, and another play is performed by the kooringal. Different 
animals are represented each night and morning, and all the dances 
and performances are as usual largely composed of abominable 
and obscene displays, which cannot be described in a paper like 
the present, The kooringal renew the black paint upon their 
1 Compare with ‘“‘The Wandarral of the Richmond and Clarence 
River Tribes.”—Proc. Roy. Soc. Victoria, x., N.S., 38. 
