Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/114

94 There is also a belief among the natives that death comes only from the decay of old age or from assassination by an enemy.

If I understand the ideas of Père Schmidt, as set forth n Mr. Thomas's paper on "The Disposal of the Dead in Australia," "there are linguistic relations between the lower Murray area and the extreme north," while Père Schmidt is inclined to regard the northern group (of languages) as "immigrant Papuan" tongues. If so, it must have taken the immigrant Papuans an enormous time to settle on the Lower Murray, and we don't know how many aeons ago they started. In his review of the Report of the Torres Straits Expedition (pp. 484-5) Mr. Thomas mentions an unpublished article of Père Schmidt, in which the learned linguist suggests that Papuan hero-worship has reached South-East Australia, and that the Euahlayi and Kamilaroi All-Father, Baiame, "bears strong traces of such Papuan influence."

Again, speaking of the Arunta (p. 391), Mr. Thomas writes tentatively of their being immigrants from New Guinea, in which case "there can hardly be any question as to their non-primitive character."

All this is very puzzling. I take little keep of linguistic arguments resting on "the dependent genitive." But how, in the name of the Sphinx, can any man be sure that the Papuans were hero-worshippers and non-primitive, when they set forth on their astonishing march from the north coast to the Lower Murray? Even if they did make this march, how can we tell whether they were in the rather advanced state of the Papuans of to-day or not? But suppose, what is highly improbable, that they were, why did they establish hero-worship on the Lower Murray, and