Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/129

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monies by which they fonually received the yoiing as members of the body politic. The origin of the practice of ** knocking out the tooth*' could not lie exphiined by the performers. They did it because their fathers did it. It was one of those remnants of a religious cuU of which the form was preserved when the spirit had waned from remembrance. From the ceremony of initiation Europeans were care- fully excluded in Australia, except in those rare instances in which they had won the confidence of a tribe; and the fact that Phillip's officers were permitted to see the ceremony described liy CuUins, proves the tact of the governor. The rite of admission to the Australian tribe did not €onfer privilege to eat all kinds of food. Stage by stage as he grew older the man aci]iiired new rights. Women also w^ere prevented from eating certain animals, so that the ob- jects reserved became the exclusive spoil of men in matured strength in a position of authority. In mere infancy the child might partake of any food given to it. Disabilities took effect after about nine or ten years. The food waa always cooked, by broiling, or by baking in hot ashes, or in an excavated o%^en Imed with stones. No vessels w^ere used for boiling water, and the ait of pottery was unknown. Among the olijects never shown to women tu' to children was a magic stone — a transparent crystal of quartz like, but smaller than, the mysterious stone which Dr. Dee traded with in England and Europe in the reign of Queen Ehzabeth. Carefully wrapped in a hall of twine of opossum fur, a notable crystal was deemed a tahsman, ami souie- times sent from tribe to tribe to work its marvels. The missionary Threlktild records that he was mysteriously show^n one (there called murramai) which was sent to Bris- bane Water (a short distance north of Sydney) from More ton Bay, In South- Western Australia the same veneration was felt for it, but the name was there teyh Death was the sentence on any one who showed the murramai to a native woman, and a grim comment on the '* conflict of laws" was furnished in the Huuter Eiver district, when a wdiite man, having, in spite of remon- strance, broken the native law, was killed by a native delegated by the tribe to do the deed, auA li^ ^V^r^^t