AUSTRALIA. HI 



reason than that he was vexed for want of a tomahawk. But now he 

 is supposed to have obtained one, and the disease will come no more. 

 The Balumbal are a sort of angels, who are said to be of a white 

 color, and to live on a mountain at a great distance to the southeast. 

 Their food is honey, and their employment to do good " like mission- 

 aries." 



It is possible that some of these stories owe their origin to inter- 

 course with the whites, though the great unwillingness which the 

 natives always evince to adopt any customs or opinions from them 

 militates against such a supposition. But a being who is, beyond 

 question, entirely the creation of Australian imagination, is one who 

 is called in the Wellington dialect Wandong, though the natives have 

 learned from the whites to apply to him the name of devil. He is an 

 object not of worship, but merely of superstitious dread. They 

 describe him as going about under the form of a black man of super- 

 human stature and strength. He prowls at night through the woods 

 around the encampments of the natives, seeking to entrap some 

 unwary wanderer, whom he will seize upon, and having dragged him 

 to his fire, will there roast and devour him. They attribute all their 

 afflictions to his malevolence. If they are ill, they say Wandong has 

 bitten them. No one can see this being but the nuyargir, or conju- 

 rors, who assert that they can kill him, but that he always returns to 

 life. He may, however, be frightened away by throwing fire at him 

 (though this statement seerns inconsistent with that respecting his 

 invisibility), and no native will go out at night without a firebrand, to 

 protect him from the demon. 



There is some difference in the accounts given of this character. 

 By the tribe of Hunter's River he is called Koin or Koen. Some- 

 times, when the blacks are asleep, he makes his appearance, seizes 

 upon one of them and carries him off. The person seized endeavors 

 in vain to cry out, being almost strangled; "at daylight, however, 

 Koin disappears, and the man finds himself conveyed safely to his 

 own fireside." From this it would appear that the demon is here a 

 sort of personification of the nightmare, a visitation to which the 

 natives, from their habits of gorging themselves to the utmost when 

 they obtain a supply of food, must be very subject. 



At the Muruya River the devil is called Tulugal. He was de- 

 scribed to us, by a native, as a black man of great stature, grizzled 

 with age, who has very long legs, so that he soon overtakes a man, 

 but very short arms, which brings the contest nearer an equality. 



