34 JOHN FRASER, B.A., LL.D., 



As to the analogies which may be drawn from Baal worship, I 

 spoke of them as briefly as possible, because they are so well known 

 in Britain. 



I may here be asked how I came to possess a full account of the 

 Bora ceremonies, when the blacks hold them as sacred, and will not 

 divulge them. So silent are they on this point that, so far as I know, 

 no one had previously obtained, or at least published, full informa- 

 tion about these ceremonies. Well, about sixty years ago it was the 

 custom in this colony for the Government to give grants of Crown 

 land of considerable extent to immigrant gentlemen who were in 

 a position to occupy and improve the land . The father of a friend 

 of mine got a grant in this way, and went to take possession. As 

 I have explained in the paper itself, he was coming down the hill 

 towards the spot where he intended to build his house, when a tribe of 

 blacks camped there rushed off in alarm, taking him to be " Wunda," 

 a spirit ; but, reassured by his gestures, they came near, and finding 

 him to resemble a chief of theirs, who had just died, they claimed 

 him as one of themselves ! His son, as might be expected, grew up 

 on terms of intimacy with the blacks on the estate, and has always 

 treated them with kindness ; they will tell him anything. At my 

 request he got a young black, who had just been initiated, to tell him 

 all about the Bora. I have in various ways tested information thus 

 given, and I am convinced that it is full and accurate. 



In the month of September, 1888, there was some correspondence 

 in the Times on the subject of Australian arithmetic. A dis- 

 tinguished authority there says, " One of the clearest indications of 

 the low mental power of savages is that afforded by arithmetic." 

 It seems to me that this statement is too general ; for even, 

 although the power of counting up to high numbers were wanting 

 in a savage, it does not follow that his mental powers in general 

 are low. Perception, cognition, and memory are mental powers ; 

 but if Sir John Lubbock's memory were weak and yet the cognitive 

 and perceptive faculties remained strong and vigorous, it would be 

 unjust to say that he is a man " of low mental power." Colonists 

 who have been long familiar with the blacks of Australia, with one 

 voice cry out against the assertion that they are of low mental 

 power, and could give hundreds of instances to the contrary. A 

 friend of min;> who, in his boyhood, fifty years ago, was much in 

 contact with the triba in the midst of which his father had settled, 

 has told me that two black boys, his companions, were " out and 



