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their dead in cemeteries whose order and solemn beauty forms
a striking contrast to the comfortless appearance of the
abodes of the living; others smoke the dead bodies of their
friends and suspend them thus preserved in trees; some
eat a portion of the corpse and carry the bones with
them for months. But ^ Differing widely in thier modes of disposing of the dead,
all agree in defending the
remains of the dead with the utmost severity. For
instance, when Darumboy, or James Davies, who was
for 13 years among the aborigines near Moreton
Bay, was with a companion who fled with him
from the settlement look gathering oysters on the
beach, they observed a basket hanging on a tree;
and Davies's comrade taking it down found that it
contained nothing but a few bones. These he threw
out, and made use of the basket to carry oysters. Unhappily
he had, without being aware of it, violated the sanctity
of the dead; and the blacks on finding what he had
done killed him. But perhaps the most terrible form
of the law of retaliation ^arises from the theory that death
is always the result of injury inflicted by some fellow
creature, who by a secret wound, by poison, by incantation or
prayer to an evil demon has compassed* the death