[Note 89:  “Dancing over him, shaking his frightful rattles, and singing songs of incantation, in the hopes to cure him by a charm.”—­Catlin’s North American Indians, vol. i.p. 39.]

It was a long time before I lost a vivid impression of this ceremony; the still hour of the night, the naked savages, with their fancifully painted forms, their wild but solemn dirge, their uncouth gestures, and unnatural noises, all tended to keep up an illusion of an unearthly character, and contributed to produce a thrilling and imposing effect upon the mind.

At the Murray River, singular looking places are found sometimes, made by the natives by piling small stones close together, upon their ends in the ground, in a shape resembling the accompanying diagram, and projecting four or five inches above the ground.  The whole length of the place thus inclosed, by one which I examined, was eleven yards; at the broad end it was two yards wide, at the narrow end one.  The position of this singular looking place, was a clear space on the slope of a hill, the narrow end being the lowest, on in the direction of the river.  Inside the line of stones, the ground was smoothed, and somewhat hollowed.  The natives called it Mooyumbuck, and said it was a place for disenchanting an individual afflicted with boils.  In other places, large heaps of small loose stones are piled up like small haycocks, but for what purpose I could never understand.  This is done by the young men, and has some connection probably with their ceremonies or amusements.

In others, singular shaped spaces are inclosed, by serpentine trenches, a few inches deep, but for what purpose I know not, unless graves have formerly existed there.

Another practice of the natives, when travelling from one place to another, is to put stones up in the trees they pass, at different heights from the ground, to indicate the height of the sun when they passed.  Other natives following, are thus made aware of the hour of the day when their friends passed particular points.  Captain Grey found the same custom in Western Australia; vol. i. p. 113, he says:—­

“I this day again remarked a circumstance, which had before this period elicited my attention, which was, that we occasionally found fixed on the boughs of trees, at a considerable height from the ground, pieces of sandstone, nearly circular in form, about an inch and a half in thickness, and from four to five in diameter, so that they resembled small mill-stones.  What was the object of thus fashioning, and placing these stones, I never could conceive, for they are generally in the least remarkable spots.  They cannot point out burial places, for I have made such minute searches, that in such case I must have found some of the bones; neither can they indicate any peculiar route through the country, for two never occur near one another.”