for the last few years have been chosen by a very old man named Guigwi.
Many of these names have a meaning attached to them: thus, two people are
named respectively Wapada and Passei, signifying particular trees, one
woman is called Kuki, or the rainy season, and her son Ras, or the
driving cloud. Most people have several names, for instance, old Guigwi
was also called Salgai, or the firesticks, and Mrs. Thomson was addressed
as Kesagu, or Taomai, by her (adopted) relatives, but as Giaom by all
others. Children are usually suckled for about two years, but are soon
able, in a great measure, to procure their own food, especially
shellfish, and when strong enough to use the stick employed in digging up
roots, they are supposed to be able to shift for themselves.

COMPRESSION OF THE SKULL.

A peculiar form of head, which both the Kowrarega and Gudang blacks
consider as the beau ideal of beauty, is produced by artificial
compression during infancy. Pressure is made by the mother with her
hands--as I have seen practised on more than one occasion at Cape
York--one being applied to the forehead and the other to the occiput,
both of which are thereby flattened, while the skull is rendered
proportionally broader and longer than it would naturally have been.*

(*Footnote. Precisely the same form of skull as that alluded to in volume
1: hence it is not unreasonable to suppose that the latter might have
been artificially produced.)

When the child is about a fortnight old the perforation in the septum of
the nose is made by drilling it with a sharp-pointed piece of
tortoise-shell, but the raised artificial scars, regarded as personal
ornaments by the Australians and Torres Strait Islanders, are not made