PORT ESSINGTON. 355 



Considering the few days given to sporting, our 

 game-book contains a very tolerable list, comprising 

 seven kangaroos, twenty quails, ten ducks, seven 

 pigeons, two pheasants, and two ibises. 



The natives in the neighbourhood of Port Essing- 

 ton are, like all others on the continent, very super- 

 stitious ; they fancy that a large kind of tree, called 

 the Imburra-burra, resembling the Adansonia, 

 contains evil spirits. Here, also, as I have elsewhere 

 observed, they fancy that after death they re-appear 

 as whites ; the bones of the dead are frequently 

 carried from place to place. 



The reader will remember the native named 

 Alligator, whom 1 have mentioned on a previous 

 visit to Port Essington. I witnessed in his family 

 an instance of affection for a departed child, which, 

 though it exhibited itself in this peculiar manner, 

 was extremely touching. The wife had treasured 

 up the bones of the little one, and constantly carried 

 them about with her, not as a memento mori, but as 

 an object whereon to expend her tenderest emotions, 

 whenever they swelled within her breast. At such 

 times she would put together these bones with a rapi- 

 dity that supposed a wonderful knowledge of osteology, 

 and set them up that she might weep over them. 

 Perhaps, in her imagination, as she performed this 

 melancholy rite, the ghastly framework before her be- 

 came indued with the comely form of infancy; bright 

 eyes once more sparkled in those hollow cells, and a 

 smile of ineffable delight hung where, in reality, 



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