Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/77

Rh relatives returned, and burned the wuurn and the remains. If a mother was affected by the disease, her child was immediately removed and given to a female relative to rear, while the mother was left to die. The aborigines say that the Meen warann came from the west in form of a dense mist; and that the chief places of mortality were round the Moyne Lagoon, and on the sand hummocks to the east of Port Fairy.

At the last of these visitations, also, great numbers died near the sea coast, and were buried in the hummocks at Mill's Reef, two miles east of Port Fairy. The skeletons were exposed some years ago by the drifting of the sand, and were found to be buried in pairs. This proves that the deaths were not then considered to be caused by any contagious disease, else the relatives would have abandoned the bodies, and only returned to burn the bones. It may be here said that there was a considerable slaughter of the natives at the same place by the white men, and the natives say that those who had escaped returned after some short time and buried their dead; but they did not bury these in pairs. The writer saw, about the year 1844, an aboriginal of the Hopkins River tribe as thoroughly marked with the small-pox as ever he saw a white man.

For scabies the natives have no cure, and they treat an infected person as though he had the leprosy. They will not touch him; and, although they supply him with food and water, they remove their wuurns to a distance, for fear of infection. On the death of the person—for the natives say that they do die of it—the body and everything near it is burned.

Scrofula is uncommon, and traces of it are seldom observable on their persons.

Cases of insanity are very rarely met with, but the aborigines believe that there is more of it since the use of intoxicating liquors was introduced, and especially since they began to disregard their laws of consanguinity in marriage. When a case of insanity occurs, a consultation is held among the relatives; and, as they have a very great dread of mad people, the afflicted person is put to death.

Children born with any deformity or defect attributable to close consanguinity, and likely to render them an encumbrance to their parents in their wanderings about the country, are destroyed. In an instance of two dumb children, which was attributed to this cause, the tribes would have put them to death but for the British law.