[Sidenote: Property of the dead hung up on trees, then washed and
distributed. Economic loss entailed by sacrifices to the dead.]

The difference in this respect between the practice of the Central
tribes and that of the tribes nearer the sea, especially in Victoria and
New South Wales, is very notable. A custom intermediate between the two
is observed by some tribes of the Darling River, who hang up the
weapons, nets, and other property of the deceased on trees for about two
months, then wash them, and distribute them among the relations.[215]
The reason for hanging the things up and washing them is no doubt to rid
them of the infection of death in order that they may be used with
safety by the survivors. Such a custom points clearly to a growing fear
of the dead; and that fear or reverence comes out still more clearly in
the practice of either burying the property of the dead with them or
destroying it altogether, which is observed by the aborigines of
Victoria and other parts of Australia who live under more favourable
conditions of life than the inhabitants of the Central deserts. This
confirms the conclusion which we have reached on other grounds, that
among the aboriginal population of Australia favourable natural
conditions in respect of climate, food, and water have exercised a most
important influence in stimulating social progress in many directions,
and not least in the direction of religion. At the same time, while we
recognise that the incipient tendency to a worship of the dead which may
be detected in these regions marks a step forward in religious
development, we must acknowledge that the practice of burying or
destroying the property of the dead, which is one of the ways in which
the tendency manifests itself, is, regarded from the side of economic
progress, a decided step backward. It marks, in fact, the beginning of a
melancholy aberration of the human mind, which has led mankind to
sacrifice the real interests of the living to the imaginary interests of
the dead. With the general advance of society and the accompanying
accumulation of property these sacrifices have at certain stages of
evolution become heavier and heavier, as the demands of the ghosts
became more and more exacting. The economic waste which the belief in
the immortality of the soul has entailed on the world is incalculable.
When we contemplate that waste in its small beginnings among the rude
savages of Australia it appears insigni