shelter the dead from the rain; they are also frequently
wound round with netting."[216] Again, in Western Australia a small hut
of rushes, grass, and so forth is said to have been set up by the
natives over the grave.[217] Among the tribes of the Lower Murray, Lower
Lachlan, and Lower Darling rivers, when a person died who had been
highly esteemed in life, a neat hut was erected over his grave so as to
cover it entirely. The hut was of oval shape, about five feet high, and
roofed with thatch, which was firmly tied to the framework by cord many
hundreds of yards in length. Sometimes the whole hut was enveloped in a
net. At the eastern end of the hut a small opening was left just large
enough to allow a full-grown man to creep in, and the floor was covered
with grass, which was renewed from time to time as it became withered.
Each of these graves was enclosed by a fence of brushwood forming a
diamond-shaped enclosure, within which the tomb stood exactly in the
middle. All the grass within the fence was neatly shaved off and the
ground swept quite clean. Sepulchres of this sort were kept up for two
or three years, after which they were allowed to fall into disrepair,
and when a few more years had gone by the very sites of them were
forgotten.[218] The intention of erecting huts on graves is not
mentioned in these cases, but on analogy we may conjecture that they are
intended for the convenience and comfort of the ghost. This is confirmed
by an account given of a native burial on the Vasse River in Western
Australia. We are told that when the grave had been filled in, the
natives piled logs on it to a considerable height and then constructed a
hut upon the logs, after which one of the male relations went into the
hut and said, "I sit in his house."[219] Thus it would seem that the hut
on the grave is regarded as the house of the dead man. If only these
sepulchral huts were kept up permanently, they might develop into
something like temples, in which the spirits of the departed might be
invoked and propitiated with prayer and sacrifice. It is thus that the
great round huts, in which the remains of dead kings of Uganda are
deposited, have grown into sanctuaries or shrines, where the spirits of
the deceased monarchs are consulted as oracles through the medium of
priests.[220] But in Australia this development is prevented by the
simple forgetfulness of the savages. A few years suffice with them to
wipe out the memory of the de