Antiquity of Mail in Victoria. 133 



stone were being laid down, T tliink it is also evidence that those 

 people wore a modern type of boot. In that case Professor 

 Spencer's view that the Australian aborigines show no signs of 

 degeneration will have to be seriously reconsidered. 



V. — ^Traditions of the Victorian Eruptions. 



Aboriginal traditions, however, are quoted in support of the 

 view that man was contemporary with some of the Victorian 

 volcanic eruptions. It is stated that the aborigines reported that 

 various rocks, now lying on the surface of the ground, were 

 thrown from the adjacent volcanic hills. This tradition is quoted 

 in reference to Mount Buninyong, near Ballarat.^ Mr. T. S. 

 Hart tells me that an old resident in the Western district, who 

 arrived there in 1847, but who is now dead, told him the same 

 about Mount Elephant. Again, Mount Leura, according to a 

 tradition current in the Camperdown district, was built up of 

 material thrown out of the basins of Lakes Bullenmerri and 

 Gnotuk. 



One of the most authoritative of these traditions is recorded 

 by Dawson." " Some names of places indicate the existence of 

 heat in the ground at a former period ; but no tradition exists of 

 any of the old craters, so numerous in the Western District, ever 

 having thrown out smoke or ashes, with the exception of ' Bo'ok,' 

 a hill near the town of Mortlake. An intelligent aboriginal dis- 

 tinctly remembers his grandfather speaking of fire coming out of 

 Bo'ok when he was a young man. When some of the volcanic 

 bombs found among the scoriae at the foot of Mount Leura were 

 shown to an intelligent Colac native, he said they were like 

 stones, which their forefathers told them had been thrown out of 

 the hill by the action of fire." 



Mr. J. Parker tells me that the aboriginals of the Loddon 

 tribe (the Ja-jow-er-ong, or Jajauwurung according to Mr, 

 Howitt's spelling) had a similar story about Mount Franklin ; 

 and from the account it appeared to have been in eruption about 



1 E.g., A. W. Howitt: "On the Origin of the Aborigines of Tasmania and Australia." 

 Austral. Assoc. Adv. Sci., vol. vii., Sydney, 1898, p. 753. 



2 Dawson, James : "Australian Aborigines, the Language and Customs of several Tribes 

 of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australia," 1881, pp. 101-2. 



