Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/523

VIII thick bushes or jungles; he is seen occasionally by day, but mostly at night. In general he precedes the coming of natives from distant parts, when they assemble to celebrate certain of their ceremonies, as the knocking out of the teeth in the mystic ring, or when they are performing some dance. He appears painted with pipe-clay, and carries a fire-stick in his hand; but generally it is the doctors (a kind of magician), who alone perceive him, and to whom he says, 'Fear not, come and talk.' At other times he comes when the blacks are asleep, and takes them up, as an eagle his prey, and carries them away for a time. The shout of the surrounding party often makes him drop his burden; otherwise he conveys them to his fireplace in the bush, where he deposits his load close to the fire. The person carried off tries to cry out, but cannot, feeling almost choked; at daylight Koin disappears, and the black finds himself conveyed safely to his own fireside."

This shows clearly that Koin is the equivalent of Baiame or Daramulun, and that Threlkeld repeats what the initiated blacks told him, as one of the uninitiated. It is very characteristic, and not less significant of the relative positions of the blacks and the missionaries, that even Threlkeld, who had aquired their full confidence, knew so little, while he was yet on such intimate terms with Biraban, the account of whom shows that he must have been one of the initiated, and able, had it been lawful for him to do so, to have given Threlkeld a full description, not only of the real attributes of Koin, but also of the ceremonies to which he "precedes the coming of natives." I have no doubt that Koin is the equivalent of Daramulun, for he holds the place in the ceremonies which the latter has in the tribes farther south along the coast; and moreover the old men of the Yuin told me that their ceremonies extended up the coast as far as Newcastle, which is the same as saying that they extended to Lake Macquarie.

There is a long extent of coast between the Port Stephens blacks and those who are known to me as the Chepara tribe. They believed in a supernatural being whom they called