Superstitions.

The natives have a superstitious horror of approaching the graves of the dead, of whom they never like to speak, and when induced to do so, always whisper.  A settler, residing in a dangerous part of the colony, had two soldiers stationed with him as a guard:  upon one occasion five natives rushed in at a moment when the soldiers were unprepared for their reception, and a terrible struggle ensued:  the soldiers, however, managed, while on the ground, to shoot two of them, and bayonetted the remaining three.  The five were afterwards buried before the door, nor could a more perfect safeguard have been devised; no thought even of revenge for their comrades would afterwards induce any of the tribe to pass that fearful boundary.

Their most curious superstition, however, remains to be recorded; it is the opinion they confidently entertain, and which seems universally diffused among them, that the white people are their former fellow countrymen, who in such altered guise revisit the world after death.  Miago assured me that this was the current opinion, and my own personal observation subsequently confirmed his statement.  At Perth, one of the settlers, from his presumed likeness to a defunct member of the tribe of the Murray River, was visited by his supposed kindred twice every year, though in so doing they passed through sixty miles of what was not unfrequently an enemy’s country.

Their religious opinions, so far as I have been able to obtain any information on the subject, are exceedingly vague and indefinite.  That they do not regard the grave as man’s final resting place, may, however, be fairly concluded, from the superstition I have just alluded to, and that they believe in invisible and superior powers—­objects of dread and fear, rather than veneration or love—­has been testified in Captain Grey’s most interesting chapter upon Native Customs, and confirmed by my own experience.

The evil spirit.

I used sometimes to question Miago upon this point, and from him I learned their belief in the existence of an evil spirit, haunting dark caverns, wells, and places of mystery and gloom, and called Jinga.  I heard from a settler that upon one occasion, a native travelling with him, refused to go to the well at night from fear of this malevolent being; supposed to keep an especial guardianship over fresh water, and to be most terrible and most potent in the hours of darkness.  Miago had never seen this object of his fears, but upon the authority of the elders of his tribe, he described its visible presence as that of a huge many-folded serpent; and in the night, when the tall forest trees moaned and creaked in the fitful wind, he would shrink terrified by the solemn and mysterious sounds, which then do predispose the mind to superstitious fears, and tell how, at such a time, his countrymen kindle a fire to avert the actual presence of the evil spirit, and wait around it—­chanting their uncouth and rhythmical incantations—­with fear and trembling, for the coming dawn.