Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land, 1830-1840 - Page 78
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[Page 78]
sufficiently show that they have an Idea of metre, and that poetry is a gift of Heaven, even to savage nations, to mitigate the afflictions and [indecipherable] incident to human life.
When travelling, the Aborigines carried with them, to avert danger, some one bone of one of their friends and relations. The Chief of the Big River Tribe kept as a relic his brothers' scull, which he used in case of danger to hold up in his hands.
Adultery is scarcely ever heard of, and the punishment of this crime is very severely punished. - In one instance when a wife proved faithless to her husband, the Chief ordered the Adulterer to be speared by the tribe before the wife's face and when he was slain, the husband was ordered to beat her brains out with waddies which was faithfully punctually executed. This custom only reaches to the Blacks.- the same objection is not made to a white man, and what is very singular, is that if a Black female transgressed with a White man, she would immediately tell her husband. - The Aborigines have an utter aversion to a liar, and in their language have an emphatic term of reproach against lying. Montilangana the Chief of the Stony Creek Tribe, when he was asked how many whites he had killed replied, with remarkable composure that he had in all slain