f a woman if he finds her
alone, he is not to be quarrelsome.[10]

At the Mysteries Darumulun's real name may be uttered, at other times he
is 'Master' (_Biamban_) or 'Father' (_Papang_), exactly as we say 'Lord'
and 'Father.'

It is known that all these things are not due to missionaries, whose
instructions would certainly not be conveyed in the _Bora_, or tribal
mysteries, which, again, are partly described by Collins as early as 1798,
and must have been practised in 1688. Mr. Howitt mentions, among moral
lessons divinely sanctioned, respect for old age, abstinence from lawless
love, and avoidance of the sins so popular, poetic, and sanctioned by the
example of Gods, in classical Greece.[11] A representation is made of the
Master, Biamban; and to make such idols, except at the Mysteries, is
forbidden 'under pain of death.' Those which are made are destroyed as
soon as the rites are ended.[12] The future life (apparently) is then
illustrated by the burial of a living elder, who rises from a grave.
This may, however, symbolise the 'new life' of the Mystae, 'Worse have I
fled; better have I found,' as was sung in an Athenian rite. The whole
result is, by what Mr. Howitt calls 'a quasi-religious element,' to
'impress upon the mind of the youth, in an indelible manner, those rules
of conduct which form the moral law of the tribe.'[13]

Many other authorities could be adduced for the religious sanction of
morals in Australia. A watchful being observes and rewards the conduct or
men; he is named with reverence, if named at all; his abode is the
heavens; he is the Master and Lord of things; his lessons 'soften the
heart,'[14]

'What wants this Knave
That a _God_ should have?'

I shall now demonstrate that the religion patronised by the Australian
Supreme Being, and inculcated in his Mysteries, is actually used to
counteract the immoral character which natives acquire by associating with
Anglo-Saxon Christians.[15]

Mr. Howitt[16] gives an account of the Jeraeil, or Mysteries of the
Kurnai. The old men deemed that through intercourse with whites 'the lads
had become selfish and no longer inclined to share that which they
obtained by their own exertions, or had given them, with their friends.'
One need not say that selflessness is the very essence of goodness, and
the central moral doctrine of Christianity. So it is in the religious
Mysteries of the African Yao; a selfish man, we shall see, is spoken of as
'uninitia