Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/241

Rh moon every month. Other persons have learned from some of the natives that the moon is a female, of very light character, associating freely with men. Certain other beings, inhabitants of the earth, are dreaded by the natives, for the mischief they do. These they call "nokoona toorlanān," which seems to signify "nokoona, the destroyers," from "toorla," to fight or kill. At Encounter Bay their name is "Dlarbe," and the natives silently allude to them by holding up the fore and little fingers. They are accused of killing men, women, and children, by coming stealthily upon them in the dark. One is described as a very large black man, eight feet or more in height; and some of them were killed a long time ago by men of a distant country. One native most accurately explained to me the mode in which they destroy their victims; going through the process by imitative motions. He first spread his blanket upon the ground, and bade me suppose that a man was under it asleep. He then retired a few paces, laid himself down at full length, crept along upon his elbows with the least possible noise, and beckoned to me to reach him a little stick he had prepared to represent the weapon. When he had arrived close to the blanket, he very carefully lifted up the corner of it, and said "Here are the head and neck." The stick was slowly thrust into the earth (as if into the neck, above the collar-bone) in a slanting direction; and, when it had been made to penetrate about six or eight inches, was in the same manner withdrawn; the finger and thumb of the left hand being ready to close the imaginary wound. This was immediately done, and, after the orifice had been kept closed by the pressure for a short time, a little earth was taken up and sprinkled upon the part, and the native said, "There is no blood, no wound to be seen, and the man is dead." This pantomimic representation was performed with great solemnity, and the explanations were uttered in a whisper. On the night of the 8th of March, 1838, a colonist named Pegler was killed by two blacks, the wound being inflicted precisely in the manner above described, and there is no doubt that natives are sometimes deprived of life in the same way, and the murderers escape by acting upon the