tchintu

A magic implement of the Wyingurri tribe that is supposed to contain the heat of the sun, and it is believed that by placing it on the tracks of an individual the latter will be seized by a violent fever which will rapidly burn him up.

A tchintu consists of a small pear-shaped lump of porcupine grass resin, into one end of which are affixed two incisor rat-teeth, and at the other end is attached a stout piece of hair-string about two feet in length. The string is covered with red down, and the whole is carried out of sight, wrapped up in thin pieces of bark of the paper-bark tree.

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