da believed he had discovered that B.
was his father-in-law. And his grounds for this singular conviction were
very remarkable. We had made a long stay at Cape York hard by; and, in
accordance with a theory which is widely spread among the Australians,
that white men are the reincarnated spirits of black men, B. was held to
be the ghost, or _narki,_ of a certain Mount Ernest native, one Antarki,
who had lately died, on the ground of some real or fancied resemblance
to the latter. Now Paouda had taken to wife a daughter of Antarki's,
named Domani, and as soon as B. informed him that he was the ghost of
Antarki, Paouda at once admitted the relationship and acted upon it.
For, as all the women on the island had hidden away in fear of the ship,
and we were anxious to see what they were like, B. pleaded pathetically
with Paouda that it would be very unkind not to let him see his daughter
and grandchildren. After a good deal of hesitation and the exaction of
pledges of deep secrecy, Paouda consented to take B., and myself as B.'s
friend, to see Domani and the three daughters, by whom B. was received
quite as one of the family, while I was courteously welcomed on his
account.

This scene made an impression upon me which is not yet effaced. It left
no question on my mind of the sincerity of the strange ghost theory
of these savages, and of the influence which their belief has on their
practical life. I had it in my mind, as well as many a like result
of subsequent anthropological studies, when, in 1869, [14] I wrote as
follows:--

There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word,
but none without ghosts. And the Fetishism, Ancestor-worship,
Hero-worship, and Demonology of primitive savages are all, I
believe, different manners of expression of their belief in
ghosts, and of the anthropomorphic interpretation of out-of-the-
way events which is its concomitant. Witchcraft and sorcery are
the practical expressions of these beliefs; and they stand in
the same relation to religious worship as the simple
anthropomorphism of children or savages does to theology.

I do not quote myself with any intention of making a claim to
originality in putting forth this view; for I have since discovered that
the same conception is virtually contained in the great "Discours sur
l'Histoire Universelle" of Bossuet, now more than two centuries old:
[15]--

Le culte des hommes morta faisoit presque tout l