68 
HORN EXPEDITION—ANTHROPOLOGY. 
considerable amount of blood to produce it, and it was clear also that it was not 
all of the same age, some of it evidently being of quite recent date. 
In the rocky slope leading up to the foot of the altar are several spoon-shaped 
depressions in the solid rock tliat had been used as natural mortars for pulverising 
the red ochre and gypsum for decorative purposes. Immediately at the foot of the 
rocky escarpment a few yards to the west of the altar is a deep-looking nearly 
circular rock-waterhole said to be permanent; and at a distance of a hundred 
yards or so right in front of the stone is a clump of eucalypts near which 
corrobborees are stated to be held. On the escarpment itself, to the west of the 
stone, were growing a good many small trees of Callitris verrucosa with other 
vegetation consisting mostly of small shrubs. 
It was very clear that the Antiari’a stone is an object of some important 
significance and veneration to the blacks. They were unwilling to speak of it at 
all, when they apparently did refer to it among themselves they spoke in whispers, 
and it was only with some difficulty that the following particulars were gathered 
chiefly from the local black who guided me to the spot with a taciturnity hard to 
overcome. 
It appears that in the cold season the male adult natives collect here and 
bleed themselves from the arm on the top of the stone, allowing the blood to 
spirt over the edge on to its face. The reason of this performance was exceedingly 
difficult to gather, but it seems that its object is a sort of propitiating function 
designed to ensure successful kangaroo hunts ; at least this was the only reason 
assigned.* Lubras (women) and children are not allowed to see the place, and 
if they should do so, according to my informants, they are certain to die. They are 
told by the elders of the tribe not to pass that way; so also was it stated that if a 
member of a strange tribe should see it he is killed. 
These were all the particulars I could gather concerning this interesting 
object after much questioning. How far they are correct I cannot, of course, say— 
any doubt upon the subject does not lie so much in the discordance of the accounts 
given to me by the blacks, but rather in respect of their extreme reluetance to 
speak of the place at all and in the difficulty, so invariably met with, of getting a 
plain answer to the simple question, as put in the jargon with which they have 
been familiarised, “what for blackfellow make him blood jump up?”—for what 
* From remarks contained in a letter recentlj' received from Mr. E. C. Cowle, it appears that tlio i)romotion of 
the fecundity of the kanj^aroo may be the special object, or at least one of the objects, of this function, and he 
further states that there are other localities which are associated with similar performances in connection with the 
supply (or with the fecundity) of other animals. 
