Untutored Man, 3 1 3 



is covered with blood ; at ten to fourteen, he is circumcised 

 in the north and south of Australia, but not in the west or on 

 the Murray River ; and at twenty, he is tattooed or scarred. 

 Felicity after death is the reward of proper burial, but a man 

 dying in battle or rotting in a field becomes an evil genius. 



No more perfect example of tribal organization exists than 

 that of the tribes of Australasia. In a very large proportion 

 of existing tribes, the tribe is an aggregate of several stocks 

 or distinct bodies of kindred, the persons composing the tribes 

 being included in stocks which are, or are accounted, distinct 

 from each other. Two tribal customs, namely, the prohibi- 

 tion of marriage between persons of the same stock, and the 

 reckoning of kinship through females only, so that children 

 are accounted of the stock of their mother, sustain this or- 

 ganization. Persons of the same stock, too, owe duties to 

 each other, and are to some extent participants in each other's 

 liabilities. An injury done by a man is an injury done by his 

 stock, which may be avenged upon any member thereof; or 

 an injury done to a man is an injury done by his stock, 

 for which every member of it is bound to seek ven- 

 geance. As a consequence of these customs, a husband 

 must be of a different stock from his wife or wives, and there- 

 fore must be accounted of a different stock from his children; 

 and if he has wives of different stocks, then their respective 

 children are accounted of different stocks. More than one 

 stock, it will thus be perceived, is represented in every house- 

 hold. And since a man owes duties to his stock the duties 

 of acknowledged blood-relationship while to those of his 

 family who are not of his stock, there being nothing but the 

 accident of birth to unite him, it necessarily follows that the 

 family among these tribes has very little cohesion. 



Wholly sensuous is the language of the Australian, their 

 abstraction tending only in the way of arithmetic as far as 

 the number five, and that itself being quite an unusual 

 stretch. Polysyllabic as it is in formation, and having the 

 accent on the penultimate, it is not at all inharmonious. 



