t, such as the tribes, on Lake Eyre,
and the southernmost Arunta of the centre. Thus, there is a limited and
modified shape of the central and northern belief in reincarnation, and
there is a great development of what are called by Mr. Howitt
'sub-totems,' which have been found most in a region of Northern
Victoria, to the south of the Euahlayi. There is a belief in
spirit--haunted trees, as among the Arunta, and there is a form of the
Arunta myth of the 'Dream Time,' the age of pristine evolution.

The Euahlayi thus present a mixture of ideas and usages which appears
to be somewhat peculiar and deserving of closer study than it has
received. Mr. Howitt himself refers to the tribe very seldom. It will
be asked, 'How far have the Euahlayi been brought under the influence
of missionaries, and of European ideas in general?'

The nearest missionary settlement was founded after we settled among
the Euahlayi, and was distant about one hundred miles, at Brewarrina.
None of my native informants had been at any time, to my knowledge,
under the influence of missionaries. They all wore shirts, and almost
all of them trousers, on occasion; and all, except the old men, my
chief sources, were employed by white settlers. We conversed in a kind
of LINGUA FRANCA. An informant, say Peter, would try to express himself
in English, when he thought that I was not successful in following him
in his own tongue. With Paddy, who had no English but a curse, I used
two native women, one old, one younger, as interpreters, checking each
other alternately. The younger natives themselves had lost the sense of
some of the native words used by their elders, but the middle-aged
interpreters were usually adequate. Occasionally there were disputes on
linguistic points, when Paddy, a man already grey in 1845, would march
off the scene, and need to be reconciled. They were on very good terms
with me. They would exchange gifts with me: I might receive a carved
weapon, and one of them some tobacco. The giving was not all on my
side, by any means.

My anthropological reading was scanty, but I was well acquainted with
and believed in Mr. Herbert Spencer's 'Ghost theory' of the origin of
religion in the worship of ancestral spirits. What I learned from the
natives surprised me, and shook my faith in Mr. Spencer's theory, with
which it seemed incompatible.

In hearing the old blacks tell their legends you notice a great
difference between them as raconteurs--s