Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/436

410 where I left it, thinking that my power might come back, but I have never found the Kiin, and I never dream any more about it."

The general belief as to the powers of the medicine-man are much the same in all the tribes herein spoken of. He is everywhere believed to have received his dreaded power from some supernatural source, or being, such as Baiame, Daramulun, or Bunjil, or the ancestral ghosts.

In all cases he is credited with being able to see men in their incorporeal state, either temporarily as a wraith, or permanently separated from their body as a ghost, which is invisible to other eyes. He can ascend to ghost-land beyond the sky, or can transport himself, or be transported by the ghosts, from one spot of earth to another at will, much after the manner of the Buddhist Arhat. The powers thus conferred on him he can use to injure or to destroy men, or to preserve them from the secret attacks of other medicine-men. He can, it is also thought, assume animal forms and control the elements.

In these beliefs there is a striking resemblance to those which have been recorded concerning wizards, sorcerers, and witches in other parts of the earth, as well as to the beliefs of savages the world over, nor can it be said that they have altogether died out even in the most civilised peoples.

Some of the practices described are found all over the Australian continent, locally if not generally. For instance, the use of human fat, and the belief in the magical properties of the quartz crystal. But as to the latter the use of the crystal globe is still with us also, and may have been handed down from the distant times when our ancestors were savages. I have found it somewhat difficult to explain satisfactorily the taking of human fat; but after considering all my evidence, it has seemed that it may have been the outcome of two beliefs which are generally held by the blackfellows. One is as to the nature of dreams, and the other as to the position which, in their estimation, fat holds in the human economy. When the blackfellow sleeps by his camp fire and has dreams, he explains them by saying that while his body lies motionless, his spirit goes