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. There she stays for about a week, waited on by her mother and sister, the only persons to whom she may speak. She is allowed to drink water, but may not touch it with her hands; and she may scratch herself a little with a mussel-shell. This seclusion is repeated at her second and third monthly periods, but when the third is over she is brought to her husband bedecked with savage finery. Eagle-hawk or cockatoo feathers are stuck in her hair: a shell hangs over her forehead: grass bugles encircle her neck and an apron of opossum skin her waist: strings are tied to her arms and wrists; and her whole body is mottled with patterns drawn in red, white, and yellow pigments and charcoal.[104] [Seclusion of girls at puberty in the islands of Torres Straits.]