Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/41

 The Forerunners ADELAIDE AND VICINITY 15 that they willingly bore three separate punishments so that they might live together ; each punishment consisted in spears being projected into their limbs -they stood firm and bore the pain with stoical resignation. When the lovers decamped they were relendessly tracked through the bush until they were caught. The two men stood face to face, and each ordered the woman to follow him ; whichever she disobeyed speared her in some part of the body. The husband was allowed to throw spears at both the man and the woman. Hut though some of them showed evidence of the possession of the gentle passion, they had no word for love in their language. When their connection was beyond the ordinary, it resembled the fidelit)' and protectorship which is sometimes seen between a strong and a weak animal. In some families a man was not allowed to marry until he had subscribed to certain customs; law prescribed a marriageable age. Close intermarrying was prevented by law ; the children received their names in some families from the mother, in some from the father, and in some, as in ancient times, from any special circumstance noted at their birth. Their notion of a spirit-world was 'ague, inconclusive, and yet potent. There were three or four presiding deities, who were gifted with limited supernatural influence; but none prayed to them, and none praised them. According to native theory, man never succumbed to natural causes. There was always some treacherous and infernal power at work to encompass death. Each family was accompanied by a sorcerer, or medicine man. He it was who could command space, and place at night a deadly malady in the body of a man of another tribe ; and he it was who could occasionally extract the insidious destroyer from the body of a member of his own tribe. When the native believed that the inimical sorcerer had visited him, and the friendly sorcerer was powerless to stay the fatal effects, no medicine could .save him. He pined away and died — hopeless, prayerless, resigned. Immediately afterwards his brethren were compelled by law to avenge his unnatural death. They first pretended to discover from which family the sorcerer had come ; after which they .set about killing, indiscriminately, one of its members. Until they did so, the spirit of the dead man was apt to become restless and wander in the vicinity of his friends at night, and occasion them no end of trouble and fright. This was a part of the great /ex talionis, which demanded eye for eye, tooth for tooth, death for death. P'or each death in battle, in the hunt, or by means of a sorcerer, another death was necessary ; thus only were the manes of the defunct men appeased. Upon the death of a male, his wife or wives became the property of his nearest relative, as among the ancient Jews. The death and burial scenes were grotesque, grim, and pathetic. Such weeping and wailing were seldom observed among other races. The women gashed themselves with the nails of their fingers and with sharp stones, and they and the men painted themselves in woful colors, to express the intensity of their grief. Strange and whimsical were the rites and customs at this extremity.