THE ABORIGINES OF THE ISLANDS OE THE PACIFIC OCKAN. 85 



which I am investigating. It appears to me that the traditions of 

 the Deluge amongst all races, when stripped of their legends and 

 superstitions, ax^e stories of cataclysms which have actually 

 occurred at different times and in different places. The suddeu 

 subsidence of volcanic islands will account for some. Storm 

 waves, such as the one which swept over Eastern Bengal in the 

 cyclone of 1876, and destroyed 215,000 people, will account for 

 others. I was over this spot with Sir Richard Temple three days 

 after the catastrophe, and had it occurred to a savage race, 

 isolated from others, it appeared to me that it would have formed 

 a very good ground for a deluge legend. 



Some such cataclysm happened here, and cut the Andamans, 

 which were formed as the estuaries of the great Burmese rivers in 

 the Tertiary period, off from the mainland. 



The Andamanese preserve traditions of this. In short, given, 

 as we must give, some hundreds of thousands of years for the 

 existence of the human race, it would be odd if the different 

 races had not got from Nature's teachings alone, Deluge tradi- 

 tions ; and the magnitude of the catastrophes, and their importance 

 in altering and resettling races, caused these traditions to outlast 

 others. 



I think most people accept " hell " because they have learnt of it 

 from some one in their childhood, and the impressions of childhood, 

 when the human mind is most liable to receive and retain impres- 

 sions without reasoning on them, warps the mind, or conscience, 

 in after life. Hell, as Europeans know it, is an invention of the 

 priesthood, and our knowledge of aboriginal races corroborates 

 •this in similar forms. 



I must apologise for the above disjointed remarks, and plead 

 press of work as my excuse for not doing better. 



2. From John Feaser, Esq., LL.D., Sydney. 

 The belief in a Creator, a Creation, and a Deluge, belongs to all 

 nations and all times — fi^om the Indian Vedas and tlie Babylonian 

 cylinders, down to the most recent utterances of the Australian 

 black men ; and Dr. Bells has done us a service in collecting here 

 so many testimonies to the existence of that belief. Whatever 

 some anthropologists may have said to the contrary, I can testify 

 that our Australian blackfellows speak of a Creator and a Deluge. 

 But as the Creator's work is finished. He is now quiescent, and, 



