of their forsaken bodies, and inquire,
are these the bodies that we formerly inhabited? The bodies will reply,
"we are not dead, but still living." The souls and bodies will not be
re-united; the former will live in trees during the day, and at night
alight on the ground, and eat grubs, lizards, frogs, and kangaroo rats,
but not vegetable food of any description. The souls are never again
to die, but will remain about the size of a boy eight years old.

[Note 86: "For that practice, they are, as far as I could learn, unable to
give any other reason than that of its being the custom of their
forefathers which they are therefore bound to follow."--Burchell's
Bichuana tribes, vol. ii. p. 531.]

The account given me by some of the natives of the Murray of the origin
of the creation, is, that there are four individuals living up among the
clouds, called Nooreele, a father and his three male children, but there
is no mother. The father is all-powerful, and of benevolent character. He
made the earth, trees, waters, etc., gave names to every thing and place,
placed the natives in their different districts, telling each tribe that
they were to inhabit such and such localities, and were to speak such and
such a language. It is said that he brought the natives originally from
some place over the waters to the eastward. The Nooreele never die, and
the souls (ludko, literally a shadow) of dead natives will go up and join
them in the skies, and will never die again. Other tribes of natives give
an account of a serpent of immense size, and inhabiting high rocky
mountains, which, they say, produced creation by a blow of his tail. But
their ideas and descriptions are too incongruous and unintelligible to
deduce any definite or connected story from them.

All tribes of natives appear to dread evil spirits, having the appearance
of Blacks (called in the Murray dialect Tou, in that of Adelaide Kuinyo).
They fly about at nights through the air, break down branches of trees,
pass simultaneously from one place to another, and attack all natives
that come in their way, dragging such as they can catch after them. Fire
[Note 87 at end of para.] appears to have considerable effect in keeping
these monsters away, and a native will rarely stir a yard by night,
except in moonlight, without carrying a fire-stick. Under any
circumstances they do not like moving about in the dark, and it is with
the greatest difficulty that they are ever induced to g