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the prevailing customs among other nations still living in their 

 aboriginal state, as well even with some of those who have 

 •entered the pale of civilization and felt its harmonising influence. 

 The manners and customs of most races teach us that they neg- 

 lect the old people, and in many instances they have been treated 

 cruelly, and have even been buried alive when they became 

 troublesome. 



Among the Murchison tribes the veneration of their aged 

 people seems to find no place, for not infrequently they kill th1)m 

 when these get too feeble to procure food for themselves, by 

 hitting them with a waddy across the back of the neck. 



If, however, a woman volunteers to procure food for any feeble 

 individual, he is left to lier, and spared as long as she likes, or is 

 able to care for him. 



At the time of my stay, a case was known in the district 

 where a woman had charge of a feeble man, living together with 

 him apart from the others, and providing for him. But the 

 woman was old too, and it was likely that the man would outlive 

 lier, and then would be knocked on the head. I asked the black 

 at the station about this, who told me that the man would likely 

 be killed, but his time had not come yet. The last part of this 

 sentence seems to me to imply the correctness of these statements 

 more than anything else. 



It is evident that the fate of being killed only meets the 

 man whose wives have died before him, because as long as 

 he possesses a woman belonging to him, she is under his com- 

 mand, and he can make her work. There seems to me a 

 policy underlying the custom of having several wives, and 

 yet in the practice of getting young ones. 



In spite of the bad traits I have had occasion to narrate of 

 this tribe, I cannot say that they have made an unpleasant im- 

 pression upon me, and although I cannot enumerate many of 

 their virtues, I must say that they make very faithful servants 

 to the whites, when fairly treated. The struggle for exis- 

 tence in the country they inhabit is at all times very hard, 

 and during prolonged periods of drought, which are, unfortu- 

 nately, of too frequent occurrence, they must be almost con- 

 tinually at starvation point. The occupation by the whites of 

 the better portion of the country makes their existence still more 

 difficult, as it drives the native game away, which cannot live so 

 well when sheep eat their feed up. If under such conditions a 

 starving black is tempted to kill a sheep now and again, it ought 

 not to be looked upon as too severe a crime, particularly when" it 

 IS considered that he does not regard it perhaps as being so very 

 wrong from his point of view, who, after all, is the rightful 

 owner of the soil, that yielded him game for ages. 



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