Beefwood gum is supposed to strengthen children. It is also used for
reducing swollen joints. A hole is made in the ground, some coals put
in, on them some beefwood leaves, on top of them the gum; over the hole
is put enough bark to cover it with a piece cut out of it the size of
the swollen joint to be steamed, which joint is held over this hole.

Various fats are also used as cures. Iguana fat for pains in the head
and stiffness anywhere. Porcupine and opossum fats for preserving their
hair, fish fat to gloss their skins, emu fat in cold weather to save
their skins from chapping.

But what is supposed to strengthen them more than anything, both
mentally and physically, is a small piece of the flesh of a dead
person, or before a body is put in a bark coffin a few incisions were
made in it; when it was coffined it was stood on end, and what drained
from the incisions was caught in small wirrees and drunk by the
mourners.

I fancy such cannibalism as has been in these tribes was not with a
view to satisfaction of appetite but to the incorporation of additional
strength. Either men or women are allowed to assist in this
particularly nauseating funeral rite, but not the young people.

Nor must their shadows fall across any one who has partaken of this
rite; should they do so some evil will befall them.

If the mother of a young child has not enough milk for its sustenance,
she is steamed over 'old man' saltbush, and hot twigs of it laid on her
breasts. To expedite the expulsion of the afterbirth, an old woman