[69] Latterly, however, experience suggested to him what seems to have been a successful mode of concealment. See Mitchell’s Three Expeditions, vol. ii. p. 271.
[70] It is even said, that persons bearing the same name with the deceased take other names, in order to avoid the necessity of pronouncing it at all. See Collins’ Acc. of Col. of N. S. Wales, p. 392.
[71] S. P. G. Report, 1842, p. 59.
[72] The half-caste children are generally put to death by the black husband, under the idea, it is said, that if permitted to grow up, they would be wiser than the people among whom they would live. These helpless innocents are destroyed, as though they were no better than a cat or dog: one farm servant of Mr. Mudie was in a great rage at the birth of a small infant of this description, and without any ceremony, only exclaiming, “Narang fellow,” which means, “Small fellow,” he took it up at once, and dashed it against the wall, as you would any animal. See Evidence before Transport. Com. 1837, p. 43.
[73] Against one of these missions Dr. Lang gives a sneer, and it may be a deserved one, though certainly expressed in unbecoming language; but the attentive reader of Dr. Lang’s amusing work on New South Wales will soon learn not to place too much stress upon all he says. See Lang’s New South Wales, vol. ii. chap. 7, p. 313.
[74] See Bishop of Australia’s Letter in S. P. G. Report for 1842, p. 53.
[75] Like most of his countrymen, Bennillong had two wives, but one of them, Barangaroo, had died, as it appears, before his departure for England. See [page 154].
[76] On a similar occasion, Cole-be placed the living child in the grave with its mother, and having laid the child down, he threw upon it a large stone, after which the grave was instantly filled up by the other natives. Upon remonstrating with Cole-be, he, so far from thinking it inhuman, justified this extraordinary act by saying, that, as no woman could be found to nurse the child, it must have died a worse death than that to which he put it.—Collins’ Account of the Colony of New South Wales, p. 393.
[77] The custom of holding out green boughs, which is usually a sign of friendship among the Australians and other savage tribes, formed part of the ceremony of suppliants among the ancient Greeks. See Potter’s Antiquities of Greece, b. ii. c. 5.
[78] The difference in disposition between tribes not very remote from each other was often striking. Only three days’ journey behind, the travellers had left natives as kind and civil as any whom they had seen, and hitherto all the people on the Darling had met them with the branch of peace.