In lieu of the gaudy costumes and of the tattooed tooth patterns etched upon the skin among other Indo-Pacific tribes, Australian women decorate their breasts and other parts with horrid scars. They cut the skin with flint or glass, and rub ashes or down into the open wounds in order that the cicatrices may be large and prominent. They submit to these tortures with the greatest satisfaction, and add more from time to time as memorials of personal experiences or in honor of the dead. The Australian women are fond of games and sports. Dr. Roth, the Northern Protector of Aborigines in Queensland, says that with a fair length of twine adult women will amuse themselves for hours at a time. The twine is used in the form of an endless string, known to Europeans as "cat's cradle" or "catch cradle." Hundreds of the most intricate and bewildering designs are made, in the formation of which the mouth, the knees, and the toes coöperate with the hand. Some of the figures are extremely complicated. Dr. Roth gives the plates of the finished patterns, which certainly are as fascinating as any work of savage hands. Australian women are described as cheerful and light-hearted, but, on occasion, they fight with their digging sticks most furiously, giving and taking blows like men. The testimony of the best observers is to the effect that, in most tribes, women are not treated with excessive cruelty, which would be quickly fatal to the tribe in longevity, fecundity, and service. Women receive their share of the resources, be they abundant or meagre. What seems to be cruelty is only custom or, as one would say, fashion; and in Australia, even more so than in Paris, you had as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. All her life, the Australian woman is in the most abject social state; her connection with the rites and ceremonies of her tribes is only as an assistant or attendant. She is charged with all the industrial occupations of food getting, and is not allowed to venture near the sacred places on in of death. She is bound hand and foot by custom. No Australian woman is believed to die a natural death. All are killed by magic--it may be a personal enemy near at hand or by a great sorcerer far away. Their life, so remote from ours, is, however, less sensitive, and it would be untrue to say that they are a melancholy set, living in perpetual dread.