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  ories of what was known as the Eaglehawk Corroboree, which had been

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notches on one side. He explained that this was a love-letter, that
the notch in the middle, represented him the Dhomka, or messenger, and
those on either side, the young man sending the message and the girl
for whom it was intended respectively. The two had met at the bunya
season some time previous, and the lover was renewing his vows by
this means. The letter had to be carried in the hat for a month or
two before he had an opportunity of delivering it.
The corroboree was a very essential element in the occupation
and pastimes of the natives. In its elaborate forms for public
performance, it combined the play, the song and the dance. The
composer of a new corroboree was regarded as a person of consequence.
He instructed the performers and led off in the representations before
both his own tribe and its neighbours. The music was generally a
rather monotonous chant, often rising suddenly an octave while preserv-
ing the same melody. The grand corroborees were given at night, the
stage being a level plot of ground illumined by fires. The performers
were painted fantastically with red and white clay, and sometimes decor-
ated with feathers. They were usually disposed in ranks, and advanced
from the background towards the fires. Part of the dancing motion
was a peculiar quivering of the legs, the feet being spread apart.
This peculiarity seems to have been common throughout Australia.
The women assisted as a kind of orchestra, sitting in front and
clapping with their hands upon stretched possum skin or on their own
thighs.
There was often a little plot in the corroboree, the machinery
being always very simple.
At Monsildale, a tributary of the Brisbane, there was a carved
log intended to represent an eaglehawk. It formed part of the access-
ories of what was known as the Eaglehawk Corroboree, which had been
transmitted from some place distant and unknown. One of the interesting
facts about corroborees was that they travelled great distances, and
were repeated by tribes to whom the words of them were unintelligible.
The corroborees, composed to be rendered in public on a large scale,
with dancing and other accompaniments, were often sung in private to
while away the hour, the singers keeping time by striking a pair of
boomerangs or nulla-nulla together.
The natives had their canons of taste as regards singing. I have
heard them take off one another very well in the matter of tremolo
and other faults of tone production.
The one theme would be varied from andante to allegro. A common
signal for a change of time or melody was to trill one sustained note
to the sound of the letter r. This answered the purpose of the ringing of
a bell.
Popular English songs were transformed into corroborees and sung
lustily by a group of blackboys, after corroboree style, without their
comprehending the sense.
The natives were all given to the composition of little stories or lyrics
on passing events, efforts in occasional verse, as they might be called.
Sometimes they mixed up the English and aboriginal languages with a
ludicrous effect.
SOCIAL ORGANISATION
The term tribe as applied to the aborigines is somewhat vague. It
has no reference to numbers, or extent of territory, or political
unity. The bond of tribal affinity, that has generally been recognised,
is community of language. This is invariably the strongest bond, and
involves and implies other factors making for union. There was no
chieftain, no organised government. There are no chiefs, in the
ordinary application of the word, in Australia. A few families claiming
the same territory usually camped and travelled together, sometimes in
(over)