the ghosts set in motion, and the sound that they
make in so doing is like the muffled roll of a drum. And while the stone
rocks to and fro with a hollow murmur, the ghosts dance, the men on one
side of the stone and the women on the other. Again at Mabudavane, where
the Mawata people have gardens, you may sometimes hear, in the stillness
of night, the same weird murmur, which indicates the presence of a
ghost. Then everybody keeps quiet, the children are hushed to silence,
and all listen intently. The murmur continues for a time and then ends
abruptly in a splash, which tells the listeners that the ghost has
leaped over the muddy creek. Further on, the spirits come to Boigu,
where they swim in the waterhole and often appear to people in their
real shape. But after Boigu the track of the ghosts is lost, or at least
has not been clearly ascertained. The spirit world lies somewhere away
in the far west, but the living are not quite sure of the way to it, and
they are somewhat vague in their accounts of it. There is no difference
between the fate of the good and the fate of the bad in the far country;
the dead meet the friends who died before them; and people who come from
the same village probably live together in the same rooms of the long
house of the ghosts. However, some native sceptics even doubt whether
there is such a place as Adiri at all, and whether death may not be the
end of consciousness to the individual.[354]

[Sidenote: Appearance of the dead to the living in dreams.]

The dead often appear to the living in dreams, warning them of danger or
furnishing them with useful information with regard to the cultivation
of their gardens, the practice of witchcraft, and so on. In order to
obtain advice from his dead parents a man will sometimes dig up their
skulls from the grave and sleep beside them; and to make sure of
receiving their prompt attention he will not infrequently provide
himself with a cudgel, with which he threatens to smash their skulls if
they do not answer his questions. Some persons possess a special faculty
of communicating with the departing spirit of a person who has just
died. Should they desire to question it they will lurk beside the road
which ghosts are known to take; and in order not to be betrayed by their
smell, which is very perceptible to a ghost, they will chew the leaf or
bark of a certain tree and spit the juice over their bodies. Then the
ghost cannot detect them, or rather he ta