On another occasion when a poor old woman had been deserted by the
natives of Moorunde, and died a few days after being brought up to the
station, I had great difficulty in getting the other natives to bury her,
they would on no account touch the body; but after digging a hole, they
got a long wiry branch of a tree, and one man taking hold of each end
they bent the middle round the old woman's neck, and thus dragged her
along the ground and threw her into the pit like a dog, all the time
violently and continually spitting out in every direction to ward off, as
they said, the infection.

[Note 83: "He tied a thong to her leg, avoiding the touch of that form
which gave him birth, dragged the corpse to some bushes, and left the
thong because it had been in contact with the body of his mother."
--Moffat's South Africa, p. 306.]

Sometimes it happens that when a death occurs, the nearest grown up male
relative, whose duty it would be to take the principal part in the
ceremonies, or inflict punishment if evil agency is suspected to have
caused the death, may be absent. In this case he would have to discharge
these duties upon the first occasion of his meeting with the supposed
aggressors. The following is an instance which I witnessed.

A relative of Tenberry, one of the principal natives of the Murray, had
died when he was absent, and the son of the deceased was too young to
revenge the sorcery which it was imagined had caused his father's death,
it therefore became Tenberry's duty to do this upon the first occasion
that offered. I was with him when the parties first came into the
neighbourhood, and I witnessed the proceedings. Notice having been sent
by Tenberry the evening before, to warn them to be ready, I accompanied
him early in the morning towards the encampment of the natives, situated