of women, he adds (320), “It is easy to understand that there can hardly be much love among husbands and wives.”  He also gives this particular instance of conjugal indifference and cruelty.  In 1842 the wife of a native in Adelaide, a girl of about eighteen, was confined and recovered slowly.  Before she was well the tribe removed from the locality.  The husband preferred accompanying them, and left his wife to die unattended.  William Jackman, the Englishman who lived seventeen months as a captive among the natives, says (118) that “wife-killing, among the aborigines of Australia, is frequent and elicits neither surprise nor any sort of animadversion.”  By way of illustrating this remark he relates how, one day, he returned with a native from an unsuccessful hunt.  The native’s twelve-year-old wife had caught an opossum, roasted it, and, impelled by hunger, had begun to eat it instead of saving it for her master—­an atrocious crime.  For fifteen minutes the husband sat in silent rage which his features betrayed.  Presently he jumped up with the air of a demon,

“scooped his two hands full of embers and burning sand, and flung the whole into the face and bosom of the naked object of his vengeance; for I must repeat that none of the natives wear any clothing, and that she was sitting there as nude as when she was born.  The devil of his nature thus fairly aroused, he sprang for his spear.  It transfixed his frantic but irresisting victim.  She fell dead....  Save by the women of the tribe, the affair was scarcely noticed.”

A HORRIBLE CUSTOM

Suppose this young wife had saved the opossum for her husband.  He would then have eaten it and, in accordance with their universal custom, have thrown her the bones to share with the dog.  After that he might have rubbed her with grease and indulged in sensual caresses.  Would that have proved his capacity for affection?  Would you call a mother affectionate who fondled her child, but allowed it to starve while she gratified her own appetite?  The only sure test of affection lies in disinterested actions of self-sacrifice; and even actions may sometimes mislead us.  Thus several authors have been led into absurdly erroneous conclusions by a horrible custom prevalent among the natives, and thus described by Curr (I., 89): 

“In some cases a woman is obliged by custom to roll up the remains of her deceased child in a variety of rags, making them into a package, which she carries about with her for several months, and at length buries.  On it she lays her head at night, and the odor is so horrible that it pervades the whole camp, and not unfrequently costs the mother her life.”

Angas (I., 75) refers to this custom and exclaims, rapturously, “Oh! how strong is a mother’s love when even the offensive and putrid clay can be thus worshipped for the spirit that once was its tenant"(!!).