She may not move her arms except to take food from her mother or to
scratch herself; and in scratching herself she may not touch herself
with her own hands, but must use for the purpose a splinter of wood,
which, when it is not in use, is stuck in her hair. She may speak to
nobody but her mother; indeed nobody else would think of coming near
her. At evening she lays hold of the two digging-sticks and by their
help frees herself from the superincumbent weight of sand and returns to
the camp. Next morning she is again buried in the sand under the shade
of the tree and remains there again till evening. This she does daily
for five days. On her return at evening on the fifth day her mother
decorates her with a waist-band, a forehead-band, and a necklet of
pearl-shell, ties green parrot feathers round her arms and wrists and
across her chest, and smears her body, back and front, from the waist
upwards with blotches of red, white, and yellow paint. She has in like
manner to be buried in the sand at her second and third menstruations,
but at the fourth she is allowed to remain in camp, only signifying her
condition by wearing a basket of empty shells on her back.[103] Among
the Kia blacks of the Prosperine River, on the east coast of Queensland,
a girl at puberty has to sit or lie down in a shallow pit away from the
camp; a rough hut of bushes is erected over her to protect her from the
inclemency of the weather.
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