Transcription

20.

sacrificed at funerals. When speaking of any live or dead shrub or food-plant, they employ the same terms as used to express a live or dead individual : they do not however ascribe any breath, will-power etc to plant-life.
12. Future Life. The idea of a future life is present but very primitive, each person believing that he and his friends will constitute the "bones" there, their conduct in life not affecting their Hereafter - they know nothing further. Nothing approaching the doctrines of transmigration : no doctors etc claiming authority as to the fate of men. The only example met with of  an the soul or "something" (sect. 11) returning or having been communicated with, was that related by a female aboriginal ventriloquist, Courangie by name whose proceedings were described by G. Hislop in the "Queenslander" for 30th May 1896. She is "a little old "woman under 4 feet in height, with crooked rickety legs, "short, spare body, and prominent chest, topped by a "small, rather bullet-shaped head with high forehead, "and a much wrinkled, weather-worn looking face, "crowned with short stubby hair." On the occasion in question having slipped out of camp one night, she frightened the whole lot of them, by when calling aloud for her, by telling them from a spot apparently up in the air that the spirits ("topo" - sect ii) were carrying her away etc. At short intervals for about an hour "her voice always replied from various quarters, a "long distance off at first, at length gradually drawing "closer and closer till at last it sounded just a little "beyond the ti-tree, and almost immediately afterwards "the old woman emerged from the bush near it. As she "appeared and advanced she was clawing at the air with "both hands, and when she got up to the camp started clawing "the men and boys. After a few minutes of this, one of the "old men got her to sit down by a fire and began questioning "her as to where she had been, and what she had seen, but "she only mumbled, and clawed for some time, and did

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