ceased and with it his chance of developing
into an ancestral deity. Like most savages, the Australian aborigines
seem to fear only the ghosts of the recently departed; one writer tells
us that they have no fear of the ghost of a man who has been dead say
forty years.[221]

[Sidenote: Fear of the dead and precautions taken by the living against
them.]

The burial customs of the Australian aborigines which I have described
betray not only a belief in the existence of the ghost, but also a
certain regard for his comfort and convenience. However, we may suspect
that in most, if not in all, cases the predominant motive of these
attentions is fear rather than affection. The survivors imagine that any
want of respect for the dead, any neglect of his personal comforts in
the grave, would excite his resentment and draw down on them his
vengeance. That these savages are really actuated by fear of the dead is
expressly affirmed of some tribes. Thus we are told that the Yuin "were
always afraid that the dead man might come out of the grave and follow
them."[222] After burying a body the Ngarigo were wont to cross a river
in order to prevent the ghost from pursuing them;[223] obviously they
shared the common opinion that ghosts for some reason are unable to
cross water. The Wakelbura took other measures to throw the poor ghost
off the scent. They marked all the trees in a circle round the place
where the dead man was buried; so that when he emerged from the grave
and set off in pursuit of his retiring relations, he would follow the
marks on the trees in a circle and always come back to the point from
which he had started. And to make assurance doubly sure they put coals
in the dead man's ears, which, by bunging up these apertures, were
supposed to keep his ghost in the body till his friends had got a good
start away from him. As a further precaution they lit fires and put
bushes in the forks of trees, with the idea that the ghost would roost
in the bushes and warm himself at the fires, while they were hastening
away.[224] Here, therefore, we see that the real motive for kindling
fires for the use of the dead is fear, not affection. In this respect
the burial customs of the tribes at the Herbert River are still more
significant. These savages buried with the dead man his weapons, his
ornaments, and indeed everything he had used in life; moreover, they
built a hut on the grave, put a drinking-vessel in the hut, and cleared
a path f