his period
elicited my attention, which was, that we occasionally found fixed on the
boughs of trees, at a considerable height from the ground, pieces of
sandstone, nearly circular in form, about an inch and a half in
thickness, and from four to five in diameter, so that they resembled
small mill-stones. What was the object of thus fashioning, and placing
these stones, I never could conceive, for they are generally in the least
remarkable spots. They cannot point out burial places, for I have made
such minute searches, that in such case I must have found some of the
bones; neither can they indicate any peculiar route through the country,
for two never occur near one another."

The power of sorcery appears always to belong, in a degree, to the aged,
but it is assumed often by the middle aged men. It is no protection to
the possessor, from attack, or injury, on the part of other natives. On
the contrary, the greater the skill of the sorcerer, and the more
extensive his reputation, the more likely is he to be charged with
offences he is unconscious of, and made to pay their penalty. Sorcerers
are not ubiquitous, but have the power of becoming invisible, and can
transport themselves instantaneously to any place they please. Women are
never sorcerers. It is a general belief among almost all the Aborigines,
that Europeans, or white people, are resuscitated natives, who have
changed their colour, and who are supposed to return to the same
localities they had inhabited as black people. The most puzzling point,
however, with this theory, appears to be that they cannot make out how it
is that the returned natives do not know their former friends or
relatives. I have myself often been asked, with seriousness and
earnestness, who, among the Europeans, were their fathers, their mothers,
and their other relatives, and how it is that the dead were so ignorant,
or so forgetful, as not to know their friends when they again returned to
the earth.

One old native informed me, that all blacks, when dead, go up to the
clouds, where they have plenty to eat and drink; fish, birds, and game of
all kinds, with weapons and implements to take them. He then told me,
that occasionally individuals had been up to the clouds, and had come
back, but that such instances were very rare; his own mother, he said,
had been one of the favoured few. Some one from above had let down a
rope, and hauled her up by it; she remained one night, and on her return,