forgotten at once and for good, as the Konikatnie bears but badly any opposition to his expressed wishes as rendered by the Baangal. Of course any information he may be pleased to give at those times, as being the result of his interview with Konikatnie, is fiction, pure and simple, concocted by himself whilst absent from the tribe.

The Baangal is perfectly aware that if he would retain his power in the tribe, he must from time to time fabricate such romances as are calculated to have that effect; and, without doubt, the ability which these wise men display in this description of literary composition is truly marvellous.

Arabian tales of good and evil genii are as nothing compared to the wonders related by these impostors, and the dense ignorance of these people, together with their extraordinary superstition, induces them to give perfect credence to whatever the charlatan may be pleased to advance.

The manner in which they graduate for the office of Baangal is very peculiar indeed, and requires a vast amount of moral courage on the part of the would-be Baangal, to carry out the programme to a successful issue.

When a Baangal dies and has been buried, a loondthal (hut) is neatly erected over the grave, and whoever has the temerity to seek the vacant office of the defunct must go at sundown, the first night of the new moon, and place himself in the mausoleum, and there remain until sunrise the following morning.

This proceeding has to be continued every night until the moon has waxed and waned, and if he successfully completes the loathsome ordeal he is deemed to have graduated satisfactorily, and is consequently inducted forthwith to the office, with its train of honors, duties, and privations.

The Baangals are all under the firm conviction that they possess the power of causing sickness, even unto death, and the laymen of the tribes are quite certain that such is actually the case. This is, therefore, the principal cause of the awe these impostors inspire their more ignorant fellows with. They, however, never put this pretended power in practice on members of their own tribes, at least they pretend never to do so. Upon the Bukeens, on the other hand, they are continually trying the potency of their magic. The mode by which they carry out this fell art of theirs is extremely novel, although it has but a small modicum of the supernatural about it, as the following will plainly show :

Should a Baangal in the course of his wanderings drop across an old encampment of Bukeens, he searches carefully about for some debris (such as bones) of the food they have eaten, but should his search for bones or some other kindred substance be unsuccessful, as frequently happens (from the fact of its being the habit common to all the aboriginal tribes to destroy by fire the bones of the game on which they have fed before they abandon a camp),

he anxiously scans the ground all round for feculent excrement, and should any of the Bukeens, from laziness or other cause, have omitted to use his paddle or to have used it carelessly, the vigilant Baangal pounces upon the unhidden fæces as a miser would on a treasure. After he has secured his savoury find, he lubricates a piece of opossum skin with the kidney fat of some of his former victims, and carefully wraps it round his treasure, after which yards of twine are wound round and round, each wind being what sailors term a half hitch, thus independent of the preceding one or the one which follows. If bones are found, their manner of treatment is the same.

At night, when all in the camp are quiet, the Baangal carefully takes his prize from the mocoor mocoor (bag), beginning a low monotonous chaunt, whilst he thrusts one end of the prepared roll into the fire; the fire is small by design. During the process of gradual combustion the chaunt is continued, sometimes low as a weak child's wail heard a considerable distance off, and again swelling up into the sonorous tones of a strong man's agony, yet never losing its weird monotony. The chaunt consists of sound principally, with an occasional interjected request to Konikatnie. Should he wish to kill the Bukeen outright in one night, he keeps up the chaunt, and pushes the burning roll forward into the glowing embers. As it consumes, and when the last vestige of it has disappeared in unsavoury smoke, the life of the Baangal's victim has ceased.

Should the Baangal, however, wish to prolong the dying agonies of his foe, he merely burns a small portion of the roll nightly, chaunting his incantation during the process; and should months pass ere the roll is totally burned, so long will the torture of his victim continue.

All aboriginal deaths, unless such as are caused by violence alone, and indeed every ailment by which they are stricken from time to time as well, are attributed to the malign powers possessed by hostile Baangals, and all the arguments and ridicule in creation will not cause them to alter their belief one iota.

When discussing the matter with them, and to prove the imposture practised on them by their Baangals, I have offered myself as a subject to be operated on by any of their Baangals they might select, telling them that it would not be necessary to complete the process to prove their case, the mere fact of my being made slightly ill would be proof to me perfectly conclusive that their Baangals were all they claimed them to be.

To them this offer of mine seemed so ridiculously absurd, they merely laughed at me, saying,-Bumbuma wirrumpola nginty (stupied ears you). Too much you whitefellow. Not that one Baangal belonging to you. What for you bumbuma poorp? (Stupid head).

PHILOLOGY.

According to various philologists, the structural basis of most primitive tongues is to be found in sounds and sights in nature, and in natural feelings. Thus, the sound noticed most frequently as arising from the wind blowing through some common medium is likely to be adopted as its name; the same thing holds good with regard to animals, they being usually designated by their respective calls. Heat and cold are named according to the ejaculations induced by each. Trees, grass, water, fire, and earth are called after some plainly seen peculiarity.

In this manner or method, it is quite possible for a language to originate, and to become after many centuries of practice, quite copious enough for all common purposes in life's every day intercourse.

This principle however is altogether lacking in the dialects of these aborigines-natural objects, feelings, and appearances, have never seemingly been called in to aid in their construction; had they been So, the numerous aboriginal dialects would have been much less meagre, and more similar than inquirers have found them.

The lack of similarity is most astonishing, considering how closely the territories of these tribes approximate; that it is so, however, is an incontrovertible fact, to which any one can speak who has had the opportunity of familiar intercourse with the various tribes. Every tribe speaks a perfectly distinct tongue, which is altogether unintelligible to aborigines out of its own pale; and when I state that about every 50 miles square of this lacustrine area possesses a tribe, having a dialect of its own, it can well be imagined the diversity of tongues by which the philologist who undertakes the task of reducing the languages of these tribes to rule is met; in fact it will be seen at once that such a project is not very feasible. Were the terms meaning the same things, in the various tribes, traceable to common roots, then of course the difficulty would be surmounted easily enough; but as this is not the case in any instance, the inquirer is at a loss to know from whence the words proceed which go to the formation of the numerous dialects, or in what manner they were originally evolved.

To show how very dissimilar the dialects are, I give below a few examples taken from two adjoining tribes; but before doing so, I may here again state that, in all cases, the negative of the dialect spoken is the name of the tribe which speaks it.

These examples though few, are quite ample enough to show how very unlike these dialects are, and the same dissimilarity holds good throughout the dialects of the whole of these tribes. Thus, therefore, one glance will suffice to show that it would be very absurd to endeavour to compile a work on these diverse tongues, with the view of its having general application; an endemic production of the kind would be practicable enough, but then the value thereof would be absolutely nil outside the precincts of the tribe from whose dialect it might be compiled. The Ngalla Wattoos, it is true, were linguists sufficient to be able to converse with the various tribes all round their own. Had these travelled men still been extant, their extended tribal knowledge would have been of incalculable service to the inquirer in matters pertaining to the multifarious dialects of the aborigines; as, however, the occupations of these men vanished as settlement advanced, the task to the philologist now-a-days is both wearisome and unsatisfactory.

The paucity of words which go to the formation of any one of these dialects precludes the remotest possibility of anything like a readable translation of even the commonest conversation, as the same word is frequently applied in many different ways, and it is only by the inflections, prolongations, &c., thereof that what it means to imply can be understood; therefore, unless to the initiated, a sentence translated into English verbatim would be all but unintelligible. Of course there are many common simple sentences such as any one, however obtuse, might readily understand, but to obtain anything approaching to a general knowledge of these dialects, so as to be enabled to apply it with any hopes of success, a life's experience, together with continual intercourse, supplemented by unflagging observation, is absolutely necessary. It would be quite impossible to teach these dialects by rule, without first forming a code of signs, whereby to denote the various accentuations, inflections, prolongations, &c.

These dialects are quite innocent of everything in the shape of grammar, grammatical relations being denoted by prolongations, accentuations, or position, each or either of which changes the meanings of different words entirely.

In illustration of the extreme meagreness of these tongues, I give the few following examples :—

Kayanie, water.

Tolkine kayanie, thirsty.
Mirnen kayanie, tears.
Kooroomboo kayanic, milk.

Birra, dead.

Birra wotchowoo, hungry.

Bocoin wotchowoo, stuffed with food.

It can readily be seen from the foregoing that the dialects of these people are about as meagre in quality and quantity as they can well be. If they were but ever so little more so, it would be most difficult, if not altogether impossible, for the aborigines to convey their thoughts or make their requirements known to each other.

From the Middle Darling, right through to beyond Cooper's Creek, and stretching thence to Lake Hope, in South Australia, the aborigines all speak the same tongue, or nearly the same; at all events, over that area of Central Australia they can readily understand each other without the intervention of Ngalla Wattows.*

I attribute this circumstance to the fact of that region being a very dry and arid one, having but few permanent waters in seasons of droughts, so that all the native tribes of that inhospitable country are compelled, during such seasons, to assemble round these waters, there to dwell together, oftentimes for many months at a time, and doubtless, on occasions of excessive drought, for a year, or perhaps even longer than that. At such periods a general amnesty must prevail amongst the tribes so assembled, otherwise total extermination would quickly ensue.

The fact of the tribes inhabiting so extensive an area all speaking one tongue induces me to imagine that the inhabitants of Australia, originally spread over the country from the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Carpentaria, breaking up into small sections, such as families, so that food might be found for all, this breaking up taking place after getting well south to the country of rivers and creeks, then each section or family diverging to the right or left, as the fancy inclined them, thus forming the nuclei of the various tribes as found by the colonists; the dissimilarity of the various dialects to what I deem the parent one, that is, the one spoken by the inhabitants of Central Australia, being fully accounted for by the persistent endeavour to forget, which I have before shown to be one of the leading characteristics of the aborigines.

Should my theory of the course followed by the earliest of this race be correct, it would not be altogether beyond the pale of possibility to trace these people back even to pre-historic man, whose remains have frequently been found in Europe, side by side with the kitchen midden, stone axe, and spear-barb, all of which pertain in exact similitude, at this day, to the aborigines of Australia.

Personal nomenclature is, in almost every instance, due to individual characteristics, or peculiarities perceivable in physique

*I am indebted to my old friend, the late John M'Kinlay, Esq., the eminent explorer, for this interesting fact.