Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/462

436 down, and he said, 'We will go up there, do not be afraid, we shall not fall down.' I climbed after him, and we came to a hole where some people were looking down at us. Your boy went through and said to me, 'I am only waiting here for you and my father, tell him that I will wait till he comes.' One of the girls said, 'How is my mother?' I said, 'Why! it is our Meena.' Then I went through and saw a lot of people there."

This not only brings out the belief in the power of the individual to leave his body during sleep, but also the idea of the sky country, to which the Murup goes after death. The ascent by a cord and the entrance, through a hole, into the sky country where the ghosts live, is in accord with the common belief in the powers of the medicine-man.

Returning to Berak and his belief in the ability of his Murup to leave his body in sleep and wander abroad, I give another instance which connects the old and the new conditions. In 1880 Berak told me that, when asleep, he went up Badger Creek, one of the tributaries of the Yarra River, and there saw a quartz reef full of gold; but although he had searched the place since then when awake, his Murup had never been able to take him to the spot. So firmly is the idea fixed in his mind, that in the latter end of the year 1900 I heard of his still searching for this spot.

The same belief is held by the Kurnai. The human spirit is by them called Yambo, and it can leave the body during sleep. As one of the Brabra Kurnai said to me, "He can go up to the sky and see his father and mother." This was also brought out clearly by another man, whom I asked whether he really thought that his Yambo could "go out" when he was asleep. He said, "It must be so, for when I sleep I go to distant places, I see distant people, I even see and speak with those who are dead."

The Ngarigo called dreams gung-ung-mura-nung-ya, and believed that in them they could see ghosts. The Yuin Gommeras could get songs in dreams, or information about approaching enemies, and a relative of a dead man could see in a dream who had killed him. The Wiimbaio had the