Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/85

 NGADHUNGI. 23 CHAPTER III. SORCERY. SECTION I.NGADHUNGI. IT is very interesting to trace that similarity between different portions of the human race, in manners, superstitions, and traditions, which would lead us to conclude that although oceans may separate them, yet they belong to the same radical stock. In Dr. Turner’s work, called "Nineteen Years in Polynesia," I observe some remarkable points of resemblance between the inhabitants of the New Hebrides and the Narrinyeri. The learned author of the work referred to gives the following account of a custom prevalent in Tanna and the adjacent islands: "The real gods at Tanna may be said to be the diseasemakers. It is surprising how these men are dreaded, and how firm the belief is that they have in their hands the power of life and death. It is believed that these men can create disease and death by burning what is called nahak. Nahak means rubbish, but principally refuse of food. Everything of the kind they bury or throw into the sea, lest the disease-makers should get hold of it. These fellows are always about, and consider it their special business to pick up and burn with certain formalities anything in the nahak line which comes in their way. If a disease-maker sees the skin of a banana, for instance, he picks it up, wraps it in a leaf, and wears it all day hanging round his neck. In the evening he scrapes some bark off a tree, mixes it up with the bananaskin, rolls it up tightly in a leaf in the form of a cigar, and then puts one end close enough to the fire to cause it to singe and smoulder and burn away gradually. When a person is taken ill he believes that it is occasioned by someone burning his rubbish; and if he dies, his friends lay it all down to the disease-makers as having burned the rubbish to the end. The idea is that whenever it is all burned the person dies. If a