242 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



Range are reported to believe that every totem-clan 

 has its own spirit-land called mi-yur, home or final 

 resting-place, to which the souls of members of the 

 clan go after death. There they congregate ; and 

 thence from time to time they emerge, and are born 

 again in human shape. The tribes inhabiting the 

 country from Beaufort towards Hexham and Wickliffe 

 have only one spirit-land for all their clans. It is an 

 island a short distance off the coast called by the 

 natives Dhinmar, but known on the map as Lady 

 Julia Percy Island. Thither every disembodied spirit 

 makes its way, and there it remains until reincarnated. 1 

 The report I cite gives no further details as to the 

 method of reincarnation ; but presumably the spirits 

 are born again into their own respective tribes and 

 clans. In South Australia the tribe (now extinct) 

 about Adelaide held that the spirits of the dead went 

 to Pindi, the western land. At some period they re- 

 turned from Pindi to be re-born, and in the interval took 

 up their abode in trees. 2 The Nimbaldi tribe, about 

 Mount Freeling, believe in "a spirit called Muree, 

 which may be either a male or a female," and which 

 meets a woman and throws a small waddy called weetchu 

 under her thumb-nail or great toe-nail, and so enters her 

 body. In due time she then gives birth to a child. 3 

 The Euahlayi, whose country is the border between 

 New South Wales and Queensland, hold that babies 

 and children who die young without passing through 



1 Mathews, Etknol. Notes, 91, 95. 



2 N. W. Thomas, Man (1904), 99 (par. 68), citing Tasmanian 

 Journ. i. 64. 



3 Mathews, op. tit. 148, citing Taplin, F. L. &c. of S. Anstr. 

 Abor. (Adelaide, 1879), 88. Compare the Arunta belief according 

 to Strehlow, ii. 53. 



