Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/109

 the name of the dead is never more alluded to. It can therefore be easily conceived what distrust and suspicion is excited in the minds of the natives if a stranger is known to be hovering about their tribe. Khourabene described to me how, when his mother died, his father provided him and his little brothers with plenty of kangaroo meat, and then took his spears and "far away walk" to look for a woman to kill. To this cruel superstition we attributed the deaths of two native children within a short distance of our own house, who, on different occasions, were speared by strangers who instantly afterwards took flight. The possibility of a like fate being in store for a little native girl named Binnahan, whom we took under our care on her loss of her mother, made us at all times feel that her life was more precarious than that of a white child. The custom of thus pacifying one soul by sending another to keep it company is believed by most persons to have originated in a desire to preserve an even balance of population amongst the tribes; I have sometimes wondered whether it had a deeper root, and had sprung from the universal tradition of the necessity of sacrifices.

A friend once took me to see a native's grave; it was made in somewhat of a semicircular form, and on the day of the funeral had been covered, she said, with swansdown, of which when I visited the spot the wind had left no vestige. Green boughs are generally arched hutwise over the burial-place, which give it a pretty appearance whilst the leaves continue fresh; and even when the twigs and foliage are withered, the deserted mound impresses the mind of the beholder less painfully than does