in particular of the Port Lincoln District. 201 



sion whatever do they pronounce his name. This, as one 

 mii-ht suppose, does not proceed from superstition, but from 

 the simple reason that they do not wish again to awake their 

 slumbering feelings, or, to use their own expression, that thcij 

 do not wish to weep so much. Should it be absolutely neces- 

 sary to name a deceased person, it is done in the following 

 manner : — I am a Avidow, fatherless, brotherless, &c., as the 

 case may be, instead of saying my father or my brother is 

 dead. The last ground on which Mr. Schurmann bases the 

 sincerity of their grief is, that they risk their lives to revenge 

 their deceased friend, if suspecting their death to have been 

 caused by foul means. 



Although at the interment of the dead certain rites and 

 customs arc generally observed, these are at times dispensed 

 with, as was instanced in the case of an old man. After 

 having dug a hole five feet deep and four feet long, and 

 spread some dry grass in the bottom, they lowered the corpse 

 into it, with the legs bent upwards, as the hole was too short 

 to receive it in its proper position. The head, as is invariably 

 done, was placed at the west end, from the notion that the 

 departed souls all reside iu an island situated eastward. The 

 body was then covered with a kangaroo skin, and sticks 

 liaAing been driven immediately above it lengthwise into the 

 sides of the grave, lea^dng a vacant space above it, the whole 

 was then filled up with earth. As the last of this simple 

 proceeding, some branches or bushes are collected round the 

 grave, A\ith the view, as I should think, of preventing stray 

 cattle and horses from trampling upon it. 



In the immediate neighboui'hood only of European settle- 

 ments, where they can obtain the necessary tools, are they 

 able to dig such deep graves. Further up in the interior, 

 however, where they are confined to the yam sticks for the 

 operation of digging, the graves are made onh^ sufiicicntly 

 deep to admit the body, the sticks being driven in immedi- 

 ately above it. This custom is always observed, very pro- 

 bably in order to prevent the wild dogs from scraping up the 

 body. 



During my stay, in 1851, of a few weeks at a station forty 

 or fifty miles north of Port Lincoln, I had the opportunity of 

 witnessing a rather premature act of these natives. A woman 

 liad fallen ill, and one of the men on the second day having 

 called at the station for the loan of a spade to dig the grave 

 with, I went on the following day to sec where she had been 

 buried, when, to my astonishment, I found her recovered. 



