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Feb. 1878, I make the following extracts. The Rev. C. C. Greenway, speaking of the Kamiloroi, says: “Baiami, Baiame, or Bhiahmee, is regarded as the maker of all things. The names signify 'maker' or 'cutter out,' from the verb bhai, baialli, baia. He is regarded as the rewarder or punisher of men, according to their conduct. He sees all, and knows all, if not directly, through the subordinate deity of Turramulan, who presides at the Bora. Bhaiami is said to have been once on the earth. Turramulan is mediator in all the operations of Bhaiami upon man, and in all man's transactions with Bhami. 'Turramulan' means 'leg on one side only,' onelegged. Turramulan has a wife called Muni Burribian -that is, egg or life, and milk or nourishing-who has charge of the instruction and supervision of women. For women may not see or hear Turramulan on pain of death. The 'tohi' (smoke, spirit, heart, central life)that which speaks, thinks, determines within man-does not die with the body, but ascends to Bhaiami, or transmigrates into some other form. It may be a wandah (wunda) or spirit wandering about the earth. The 'bunna,' flesh or material part, perishes; the 'wundah' may become a white man. The transmigration of the 'tohi' is generally to a superior condition; but those who are very wicked go to a more degraded and miserable condition." Mr Thomas Honery, writing of the Wailwun people, reports: "Bai-ame made all things. He first made man at the Murula (a mountain between the Narran and the Barwon). Bai-ame once lived among men. There is, in the stony ridges between the Barwon and the Narran, a hole in a rock, in the shape of a man, two or three times as large as an ordinary man, where Bai-ame used to go to rest himself. He

had a large tribe around him there, whom he fed at a place called 'Midul.' Suddenly he vanished from them and went up to heaven. Still, though unseen, he provides them with food, making the grass to grow. They believe that he will come back to them at some future time." Of the aborigines on the Page and the Isis, we are told that they believe that "the deity who comes down at their 'Bora' is very good and very powerful. He is very ancient, but never gets older. He saves them by his strength. He can pull trees up by the roots and remove mountains. If anything attacks them he tears it to pieces." In the language of Illawarre, "Mirrirul" is the word for God. "The people say that 'Mirrirul' made all things. Their old men have told them that there is, beyond death, a large tree, on which Mirrirul stands to receive them when they die. The good he takes up to the sky, the bad he sends to another place to be punished."

In the same number of the above-mentioned journal, Mr C. H. E. Carmichael draws attention to the account given by Monsignor Salvado of the Benedictine Mission. in New Nursia, in Western Australia. It was long before the Benedictines ascertained that the natives had any religious beliefs, as regarding these beliefs they were "singularly and obstinately reticent." Ultimately, according to Monsignor Salvado, it was found that "they believe in an Omnipotent Being, creator of heaven and earth, whom they call Motogon, and whom they imagined as a very tall, powerful, and wise man of their own country and complexion. His mode of creation was by breathing: e.g., to create the earth, he said, 'Earth, come forth,'-and he breathed, and the earth was created. So with the sun, the trees, the kangaroo,

&c. Motogon, the author of good, is confronted with Cienga, the author of evil. This latter being is unchainer of the whirlwind and the storm, and the invisible author of the death of their children; wherefore the natives fear him exceedingly. What is remarkable, however, is, that although the natives believe themselves to be afflicted by Cienga, they do nothing to propitiate him. When a sudden thunderstorm comes upon them, they raise hideous cries, strike the earth with their feet, imprecate death and misfortune upon Cienga, whom they think the author of it, and then take refuge under the nearest trees. The general belief is, that Cienga prowls about at night among the trees; and for this reason the natives can scarcely be got to stir from their fire after sunset. Only mothers who have lately lost a child will brave these dangers to go in quest of its soul, and if they hear the cry of a bird in the bush, will spend hours there calling upon it and begging it to come to them. So strong is the Australian mother's love."

NOTE XXIX., page 274.

ALLEGED ATHEISM OF AFRICAN TRIBES.

The second volume of Waitz's Anthropology gives by far the best general view of African religions. I should have attempted to summarise his statements, had this not been already and recently done by Professor Max Müller in his Hibbert Lectures. The facts collected by Waitz show not only that all the African peoples regarding which we possess any considerable amount

of information have religious conceptions, but that the belief in a Supreme Being is very widely spread among them.

The travels of Baker, Barth, Cameron, Grant, Speke, and Stanley have not contributed greatly to our knowledge of the religions of the peoples they visited. Their not seeing in certain cases traces of religion, may perhaps be some slight evidence that what is called fetichism is not prevalent in districts which they traversed.

Sir Samuel Baker says of the Dinkas, Shilluks, Nuehrs, and other White Nile tribes, that "they are without a belief in a Supreme Being, neither have they any form of worship or idolatry, nor is the darkness of their minds enlightened by even a ray of superstition." But as Mr Tylor (Primitive Culture, vol. i. pp. 423, 424) has pointed out, the religions of these very tribes have been described by Kaufmann, Brun-Rollet, Lejean, and other travellers. All the evidence which Sir Samuel produces for the atheism of the Latukas is a conversation with the chief Commoro regarding the future life and the resurrection. See Albert N'Yanza, vol. i. pp. 246250. The impression which the report of the conversation leaves on my mind is, that Commoro was not frankly stating his own views, but trying to ascertain those of his interrogator. Even if this were not the case, however, his disbelief of a future life was obviously a conclusion arrived at through considerable reflection. When Sir Samuel made a mistaken application of St Paul's metaphor of the grain of wheat, Commoro detected the fallacy at once. Sir Samuel was, in consequence, obliged to "give up the religious argument as a failure;" but instead of inferring that here was a Latuka Hume or Bradlaugh, whose very scepticism plainly implied

religious thought, he concluded that "in this wild, naked savage" ("one of the most clever and common-sense savages that I had seen in these countries," says he elsewhere), "there was not even a superstition upon which to found a religious feeling.”

Probably the best work on the Hottentots, Bushmen, and Kaffirs is G. Fritsch's Eingeborenen Süd-Afrikas,' 1872. Canon Callaway's account of the religion of the Kaffirs is well known; also Casalis' work on the Bassutos. The sketches of the religion of the Hottentots by Prichard in his 'Natural History of Man' and 'Researches' are very much superior to most of the later accounts. The celebrated missionary Robert Moffat affirms that the Bechuanas, Kaffirs, &c., have no religion; yet in chapters xv. and xvi. of his 'Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa' he supplies a considerable amount of evidence to the contrary.

NOTE XXX., page 275.

ALLEGED ATHEISM OF ESQUIMAUX.

Probably the best account of the religion of the Esquimaux will be found in the introduction to Dr H. Rink's Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,'-see pp. 35-64. According to it, few traces of ideas as to the origin and early history of the world and the supreme powers are discoverable among them. They believe, however, that the whole visible world is ruled by powers or "owners," each of which is an inua—a person or soul.

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