hree days it goes off to a beautiful
country above the clouds, abounding with kangaroo and other game, where
life will be enjoyed for ever. Friends will meet and recognize each
other there; but there will be no marrying, as the bodies have been left
on earth. Children under four or five years have no souls and no future
life. The shades of the wicked wander miserably about the earth for one
year after death, frightening people, and then descend to Ummekulleen,
never to return." After giving us this account of the native creed Mr.
Dawson adds very justly: "Some of the ideas described above may possibly
have originated with the white man, and been transmitted from Sydney by
one tribe to another."[191] The probability of white influence on this
particular doctrine of religion is increased by the frank confession
which these same natives made of the religious deterioration (as they
regarded it) which they had suffered in another direction through the
teaching of the missionaries. On this subject, to quote again from Mr.
Dawson, the savages are of opinion that "the good spirit, Pirnmeheeal,
is a gigantic man, living above the clouds; and as he is of a kindly
disposition, and harms no one, he is seldom mentioned, but always with
respect. His voice, the thunder, is listened to with pleasure, as it
does good to man and beast, by bringing rain, and making grass and roots
grow for their benefit. But the aborigines say that the missionaries and
government protectors have given them a dread of Pirnmeheeal; and they
are sorry that the young people, and many of the old, are now afraid of
a being who never did any harm to their forefathers."[192]

[Sidenote: Vagueness and inconsistency of native beliefs as to the state
of the dead. Custom or ritual as the interpreter of belief.]

However, it is very difficult to ascertain the exact beliefs of savages
as to the dead. The thought of the savage is apt to be vague and
inconsistent; he neither represents his ideas clearly to his own mind
nor can he express them lucidly to others, even if he wishes to do so.
And his thought is not only vague and inconsistent; it is fluid and
unstable, liable to shift and change under alien influence. For these
and other reasons, such as the distrust of strangers and the difficulty
of language, which often interposes a formidable barrier between savage
man and the civilised enquirer, the domain of primitive beliefs is beset
by so many snares and pitfalls tha