74 
HORN EXPEDITION—ANTHROPOLOGY. 
presence, absence of or variation in the plumes, by differences in the patterns of 
adlierent down, or by the addition of accessory appendages a great variety of 
styles can be produced, some of which are represented on Plate VITT., Figs. 1 to 5, 
and Plates IX., XIV. and XV. Each corrobboree has its appropriate patterns of 
liead-dress no less than of body decorations. 
After these various preparations, which occupied the greater part of the day, 
the corrobboree began at about eight o’clock in the evening. At the eastern end 
of the cleared space, the forked pole being at the western, was a seated group of 
about forty women, children and old men mostly naked, and in the midst of the 
group several small fires were kept carefully burning for warmth’s sake in tlie 
keen night air. These individuals constituted the singing chorus, the men also 
beating time by the concussion of two boomerangs, and the women adding an 
accompaniment of low, hollow-toned clapping sounds, similar to those emitted by 
striking the cupped hands together. These they produce by striking with the half 
closed hand on the natural hollow which exists, in the sitting posture, at the 
junction of the pubes with the adducted thighs. 
The actual performers in the corrobboree were on this occasion ten, a small 
number when compared to that which takes part in a more regularly organised enter¬ 
tainment. All these were decorated after the manner described and wore, besides, 
as anklets, bunches of green eucalyptus branches, leaves uppermost, (Plate XIV., 
Fig. 17*) which were tied on with strands of the bast of bai’k (eucalyptus). 
Nothing else beyond these decorations was worn except the small fan-shaped 
tassels attached to the pubic hairs (Plate VI., Fig. 8). In their hands they carried 
thin wands, about five feet long, coloured with spiral markings of red and white. 
As is usual the performance consisted of a series of advancing and retreating 
movements executed with the peculiar stamping step common to all the corrobborees 
that I have seen; this was done in such excellent time as to produce only one simul¬ 
taneous, loud impact of the feet upon the ground. The scene was illuminated 
witli the light of burning branches, which were from time to time added to the 
adjacent fires by members of the chorus group. 
After the execution of several of these advancing and retreating movements 
a lubra from the chorus group advanced to the dancers, then standing near the 
pole, one of whom went out into the darkness towards the south, while another male, 
from the chorus group, went towards the north. On this all the lubras and children 
retired to a short distance, but on the return, after a few minutes, of the man from 
the north the women and children resumed their places. Then, after a few more 
This illustration refers to a different corrobboree. 
