even have to save himself by flight. Yet after all this the two would go away again on the first opportunity. Finally the affair blew over and they settled down among the married people, who indeed had themselves gone through the same experience.
In cases where they returned after the first anger of the girl's relatives had subsided, the procedure was somewhat different. A good instance was one which occurred among the Tarra blacks, South Gippsland, in the year 1856. The young man concerned was working as a stock-keeper on a station near Tarraville. He ran off with a girl of the Tara-tara division of the Brataualnng clan. As was customary there, they went to Snake Island, and remained there some time. When they returned, there was such a disturbance in the camp that my informant[1] went to see what it was about. The young man was standing naked about sixty yards distant from the camp, holding a shield in his hand. A number of his friends were standing further back. Some women were drumming on rolled-up skin rugs, and the Headman Bunjil-gworan[2] and other men stood facing the young man and his friends. Much speaking went on. Bunjil-gworan made an oration, and an old woman followed him. Then came a speech from another old man and another old woman, and so on alternately for about two hours, after which several men stood out, each having a spear and a boomerang. In succession each threw a spear, and immediately after a boomerang, which were warded off or dodged by the offender. When each had thrown his weapons, the matter ended, and the young man was permitted to retain his wife. This was one of those regulated expiations which I have spoken of.
Snake Island was the place of refuge of the Brataualung, not only in cases of elopement, but also when raids were made on them by the other clans of the Kurnai. It lies off the mouths of the Tarra and the Agnes Rivers.
There can be no doubt that the old people of the Kurnai winked at this practice of marriage by elopement. In by far the greater number of cases they themselves had obtained a wife or husband in this manner, and yet when their daughter
