Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/380

356 tribe was in the habit of spearing every white man who came in their way."

Fred asked what were their burial customs, and if they had any belief in a future existence.

"The dead are buried in the spots where they die, and these places are never inhabited again by members of the dead man's tribe, nor are they even visited except on rare occasions or from necessity. The names of the dead are never pronounced, and those having the same names are obliged to change them. My partner at the sheep-station died of fever; he had been kind to the blacks, and was evidently liked by them, but I could never get them to listen to any reference to him after his death, and they did not like to look at his photograph, which hung in the house.

"They have very crude ideas on religious matters. They believe in good and bad spirits; and some tribes have a belief in a supreme being, while others have none. They have many myths and superstitions, and some of these myths display a vivid imagination on the part of those who invented them. Shall I tell you some of them?"

The youths said they would greatly like to hear some of the Australian myths, whereupon Mr. Watson continued:

"The aboriginal theory about the creation is that Pund-jel, or Bun-jil, created two men out of the clay of the earth, but he did not create women. That honor was reserved for Pal-ly-yan, the son of Pund-jel, who made a woman for each of the men. Pund-jel gave each man a spear, and told him to kill the kangaroo with it; and to the women he gave a digging-stick for digging roots from the ground. The men and women were ordered to live together, and thus the world was peopled. By-and-by people became very numerous, and then Pund-jel caused storms to arise, and winds to blow so severely as to scatter the people over the earth, and thus the human race was dispersed.

"The first man and woman were told not to go near a certain tree in which a bat lived, as he was not to be disturbed. One day the woman, in gathering firewood, went near the tree; the bat flew away, and after that came death."

"How closely it resembles the Biblical account of the fall of man!" Fred remarked.

"The resemblance has been noticed by writers on the subject," said Mr. Watson, "and some believe that the tradition is not genuine. Mr. Brough Smyth, author of an exhaustive work on the Aborigines of Victoria, accepts it as genuine, and so do other prominent writers. I have