Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/41

36 melange, such as even a diciple [sic] of the famed Epicurus could scarcely cavil at.

It will thus be seen that everything used by the dwellers in these island villages has to be brought there from outside places, and the daily refuse therefrom aids very materially towards the growth of these mounds. So long as the game and fish continue plentiful, the natives never think of moving to fresh quarters—that is to say, unless the tiny spot becomes too offensive for even aboriginal olfactories to bear with any degree of pleasure. When it does so, they shift away to another mound, leaving natural agencies to purify the contaminated atmosphere round about the abandoned spot.

Aboriginal skeletons are frequently discovered in the cooking mounds, hence the idea which generally prevails of their being tumuli. This fact can, however, be accounted for in a very simple manner. For example, a death takes place on one of these isolated spots, when their happens to be only a small section of a tribe located thereon; and as grave-digging is very arduous when hands are few, and the implements merely yamsticks, the easiest method, therefore, of covering up the dead from their sight is at once adopted, and that is done by scraping a hole in the friable soil of the mound, in which the body is placed and covered up. Immediately after one of these hurried burials, the mound is vacated, and ere much time has passed, the defunct subject is entirely forgotten. Be it understood that this description of sepulture is only given to old women, or those who had been invalids of long standing, and who had become troublesome thereby to their unwilling attendants.