himself, he assists in getting up the dances
and songs with which their evening terminates.

INFLUENCE OF THEIR SONGS.

Is a native afraid, he sings himself full of courage; in fact under all
circumstances he finds aid and comfort from a song. Their songs are
therefore naturally varied in their form; but they are all concise and
convey in the simplest manner the most moving ideas: by a song or wild
chant composed under the excitement of the moment the women irritate the
men to acts of vengeance; and four or five mischievously inclined old
women can soon stir up forty or fifty men to any deed of blood by means
of their chants, which are accompanied by tears and groans, until the men
are worked into a perfect state of frenzy.

NATIVE POETS.

A true poet in Australia is highly appreciated. Simple as their songs
appear, there are in them many niceties which a European cannot detect;
it is probable that what is most highly estimated by this people is that
the cadence of the song, and the wild air to which it is chanted, should
express well to their ideas the feelings and passions intended to
predominate in the mind at the moment in which it is sung: hence we find
that the compositions of some of these poets pass from family to family,
and from district to district, until they have very probably traversed
the whole continent; the natives themselves having at last no idea of the
point where they originated, or of the meaning of the words which they
sing, successive changes of dialect having so altered the song that
probably not one of the original words remains; but they sing sounds
analogous to these, to the proper air. And this is not confined to
Western Australia, for Mr. Threlkeld, in his Australian Grammar,* says:

There are poets among them who compose songs which are sung and danced to
by their own tribe in the first place, after which other tribes learn the
song and dance, which itinerates from tribe to tribe throughout the
country, until, from change of dialect, the very words are not understood
by the blacks.

(*Footnote. Page 90.)

...

A family seldom make a distant friendly visit to other tribes, but they
bring back a new song or two with them, and these, for a time, are quite
as much the rage as a new fashionable song in England. Occasionally the
songs also bear the name of the poet who composed them, though this is
not often the case; there are however two or three poets in Australia who
enjoy a great