Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/99

94  gets all the blame and consequent abuse. They carry their belief in this spirit to such an extent that they actually pretend to show his tracks or foot-marks on the ground when there is really nothing to show, unless it be perhaps some slight depressions altogether due to the action of water.

They cannot bear the least ridicule which tends to impugn in the slightest degree this absurd belief of theirs; indeed, they become very irate should anyone have the temerity to attempt such a thing.

The aborigines hold it a matter utterly impossible for a white man to understand things which are purely aboriginal; they do not fail to retaliate either when requested to produce their good and bad spirits by asking us to show them ours, of whom we tell them so much. This, of course, we cannot do, any more than they can show us theirs; thus, it is therefore a hopeless task endeavouring to discuss matters having the remotest theological tendency with them; and when (by chance more frequently than design) we have been drawn into arguments of the kind, we have mostly had to acknowledge to ourselves our signal failure, and if we could retreat gracefully from the wordy encounters, we esteemed it something to be particularly grateful for. The aborigines, however, are quite sharp enough to observe our discomfiture on such occasions, however much we may strive to disguise the humiliating fact.

When we endeavour to impress upon their savage minds that our Diety made the whole universe, and every animal on it, man included, they simply say: "Nothing of the kind; it is not so." The world was never made by any