Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/492

466 passing away of the Jir, "ghost" or "spirit." After death, the body is rolled tightly in a skin rug, and then placed in a grave about four feet deep. All the personal property, except perhaps some choice articles, are then laid on the corpse, and the grave filled with sticks and bark, covered over with earth and with large logs placed on it. The surrounding trees are marked, the grave is left, no one going near it and no one speaking of it. The name of the deceased is never mentioned, and if any one else has the same name he is obliged to drop it and assume another.

There is a curious belief among the Wiradjuri that, when a man is near death he can see the shadow of the person who has caused his death by evil magic. Under such circumstances, he will say to those about him, "Get out of my way so that I may see who it is who has caught me." This same belief existed elsewhere, for instance in the Jupagalk tribe; and I remember a case in the Kurnai, when a man being almost at the point of death, his friend Tankowillin, who was attending to him, said again and again, "Can you see who it is?" and was greatly troubled when his friend died without being able to tell him.

Speaking of about the year 1830, it is said that among the southern Kamilaroi loud cries were raised on the occasion of a death in the camp. The relatives, and especially the women, cut their heads with tomahawks, and the blood was allowed to remain on them, while for mourning they smeared the head with pipe-clay. While the body was still warm, they brought nets and opossum rugs as wrappers for the corpse, spread them on the ground, and doubled the body into the form of a bale, with the knees and chin touching each other. Then they wrapped the bale in the nets and rugs and tied it tightly. A shallow hole was dug with yam-sticks, in which the body was placed, and being filled in with soil, was covered with logs and deadwood to keep the dingoes out. In the northern districts of the Kamilaroi country the burial was sometimes in soft ground. If there was not any soft ground at hand, the body was placed in a hollow tree.

When an old infirm black had become too feeble to