om what happened to them there, be freed from all
future apprehensions respecting apparitions; for during that awful sleep
the spirit of the deceased would visit them, seize them by the throat,
and, opening them, take out their bowels, which they would replace and
close up the wound. We understood that very few chose to encounter the
darkness of the night, the solemnity of the grave, and the visitation of
the spirit of the deceased; but that such as were so hardy became
immediately car-rah-dys, and that all those who exercised that profession
had gone through this ceremony.

It is very certain, that even in the day-time they were strangely
unwilling to pass a grave; but I believe that their tale of being seized
by the throat by a ghost was nothing more than their having felt the
effects of what we term the night-mare during an uneasy sleep.

To the shooting of a star they attach a degree of importance; and I once,
on an occasion of this kind, saw the girl Boo-roong greatly agitated, and
prophesying much evil to befal all the white men and their habitations.

Of thunder and lightning they are also much afraid; but have an ideal
that by chanting some particular words, and breathing hard, they can
dispel it. Instances of this have been seen.

APPENDIX VIII--DISEASES

Their living chiefly on fish (I speak of those whom we found on the sea
coast) produces a disorder which greatly resembles the itch; they term it
Djee-ball djee-ball; and at one time, about the year 1791, there was not
one of the natives, man, woman, nor child, that came near us, but was
covered with it. It raged violently among them, and some became very
loathsome objects.

The venereal disease also had got among them; but I fear our people have
to answer for that; for though I believe none of our women had connection
with then, yet there is no doubt but that several of the black women had
not scrupled to connect themselves with the white men. Of the certainty
of this an extraordinary instance occurred. A native woman had a child by
one of our people. On its coming into the world she perceived a
difference in its colour; for which not knowing how to account, she
endeavoured to supply by art what she found deficient in nature, and
actually held the poor babe, repeatedly, over the smoke of her fire, and
rubbed its little body with ashes and dirt, to restore it to the hue with
which her other children had been born. Her husband appeared as fond of
it