H2 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



This goblin has a wife who is much like himself, but still more 

 feared, being of a cruel disposition, with a cannibal appetite, espe- 

 cially for young children. It would hardly be worth while to dwell 

 upon these superstitions, but that they seem to characterise so dis- 

 tinctly the people, at once timid, ferocious, and stupid, who have 

 invented them. 



Their opinions with regard to the soul vary. Some assert that the 

 whole man dies at once, and nothing is left of him. Others are of 

 opinion that his spirit still survives, but upon this earth, either as a 

 wandering ghost, or in a state of metempsychosis, animating a bird or 

 other inferior creature. But the most singular belief is one which is 

 found at both Port Stephens and Swan River, places separated by 

 the whole breadth of the Australian continent. This is, that white 

 people are merely blacks who have died, passed to a distant country, 

 and having there undergone a transformation, have returned to their 

 original homes. When the natives see a white man who strongly 

 resembles one of their deceased friends, they give him the name of 

 the dead person, and consider him to be actually the same being. 



SOCIAL POLITY. 



The Australians have nothing which can be called a government. 

 They have not even any word, in the Wellington dialect, signifying 

 a chief or superior, or any proper terms for the expressions " com- 

 mand" " obey," and the like. Each family, being the source of all 

 its own comforts and providing for its own wants, might, but for the 

 love of companionship, live apart and isolated from the rest, without 

 sacrificing any advantage. Their wars, religious celebrations, and 

 festive assemblies are the only occasions when co-operation is really 

 necessary among them, and even these are regulated by different 

 principles from those which prevail among other savages. They 

 have not, properly speaking, any distinction of tribes. Two bodies 

 of men, speaking the same dialect, are frequently seen drawn up in 

 battle against each other; and those who, in one war, are fellow- 

 combatants, may, a few days afterwards, be in opposite ranks. 



They have, however, a social system of their own, regulated by 

 customs of whose origin they can give no accoxint, and to which they 

 conform apparently because they have no idea of any other mode of 

 life, or because a different course would be followed by the universal 

 reprobation of their fellows. Of these customs, which partake of the 



