THE ABORIGINES OP AUSTRALIA. 5 



flesh/' "raw eaters/' " not sacrificing/' "without gods/' 

 " without rites." All this suits our aboriginals ; for they use 

 stone axes ; in several districts they make grave-mounds ; 

 the typical natives are " noseless/' for they have very flat and 

 depressed noses as contrasted with the straight and promi- 

 nent noses of the Vedic Aryans ; they have no gods and no 

 religious rites such as the Vedas demand. (2) The Kolarian 

 and Dravidian languages have inclusive and exclusive forms 

 for the plural of the first person. So also have many of the 

 languages of Melanesia and Polynesia. (3) The aborigines 

 in the south and west of Australia use the same words for 

 I, thou, we, you, as the natives of the Madras coasts of India. 



Having thus shown from history and from the migration of 

 nations that the aborigines of Australia, as to their remote 

 descent, may be the brothers of the negroes in Africa, I now 

 proceed to my proper theme, a comparison of the religious 

 ceremonies and beliefs on both continents. We cannot expect 

 to find set modes of worship or a formulated creed such as 

 the possession of sacred books might secure, but we shall 

 rather seek for analogies in the experiences and practices of 

 their social and tribal life, for it is there that ancestral beliefs 

 often stamp themselves permanently ; a custom is there main- 

 tained from age to age, while those who practise it know not 

 what it means or whence it came. 



At present I confine myself to one tribal custom ; our black 

 fellows have a ceremony called the Bora, through which the 

 young men pass when admitted into the tribe. This Bora exists 

 everywhere throughout Australia, and is carried out everywhere 

 much in the same fashion. I therefore conclude that it belongs 

 to the whole race, and is an essential attribute of its existence. 

 Now, if I may trust the accuracy of Kurd's Rites and Ceremonies, 

 the negroes of Upper Guinea had, seventy years ago long 

 before ethnography became a science certain religious mys- 

 teries singularly like those of the Bora, and I suppose they 

 have them still.* These, like the Bora, are ceremonies of 



* From W. Winwood Reade's book on Savage Africa (London : Smith, 

 Elder, & Co.) I learn that similar ceremonies still exist in Equatorial Africa. 

 He says : " Before they are permitted to wear clothes, marry, and rank in 

 society as men and women, the young have to be initiated into certain 

 mysteries. I received some information on this head from Moongilomba, 

 after he had made me promise that I would not put it in my book. He told me 

 that he was taken into a Fetich-house, stripped, severely flogged, and plas- 

 tered with goat- dung, this ceremony, like those of Masonry, being conducted 

 to the sound of music. Afterwards there came from behind a kind of 

 screen or shrine uncouth and terrible sounds, such as he had never heard 

 before. These, he was told, emanated from a spirit called Ukuk. He after- 

 wards brought to me the instrument with which the fetich-man makes this 



