form a ring round her, and thus escort her to the beach.  Arrived at the shore, she is stripped of her ornaments, and the bearers stagger with her into the creek, where they immerse her, and all the other women join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers.  When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon.  The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek.  Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it.  The girl is then fed by her attendants with the roasted claws.  After that she is freshly decorated, and the whole party marches back to the village in a single rank, the girl walking in the centre between her two old aunts, who hold her by the wrists.  The husbands of her aunts now receive her and lead her into the house of one of them, where all partake of food, and the girl is allowed once more to feed herself in the usual manner.  A dance follows, in which the girl takes a prominent part, dancing between the husbands of the two aunts who had charge of her in her retirement.[99]

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in Northern Australia.]

Among the Yaraikanna tribe of Cape York Peninsula, in Northern Queensland, a girl at puberty is said to live by herself for a month or six weeks; no man may see her, though any woman may.  She stays in a hut or shelter specially made for her, on the floor of which she lies supine.  She may not see the sun, and towards sunset she must keep her eyes shut until the sun has gone down, otherwise it is thought that her nose will be diseased.  During her seclusion she may eat nothing that lives in salt water, or a snake would kill her.  An old woman waits upon her and supplies her with roots, yams, and water.[100] Some tribes are wont to bury their girls at such seasons more or less deeply in the ground, perhaps in order to hide them from the light of the sun.  Thus the Larrakeeyah tribe in the northern territory of South Australia used to cover a girl up with dirt for three days at her first monthly period.[101] In similar circumstances the Otati tribe, on the east coast of the Cape York Peninsula, make an excavation in the ground, where the girl squats.  A bower is then built over the hole, and sand is thrown on the young woman till she is covered up to the hips.  In this condition she remains for the first day, but comes out at night.  So long as the period lasts, she stays in the bower during the day-time, but is not again covered with sand.  Afterwards her body is painted red and white from the head to the hips, and she returns to the camp, where she squats first on the right side, then on the left side, and then on the lap of her future husband, who has been previously selected for her.[102] Among the natives of the Pennefather River, in the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, when a girl menstruates for the first time, her mother takes