ng that none of it by
cultivation has been rendered fit for the permanent support of man.
According to Giaom, there are laws regulating the ownership of every inch
of ground on Muralug and the neighbouring possessions of the Kowraregas,
and I am led to believe such is likewise the case at Cape York. Among
these laws are the following: A person has a claim upon the ground where
both himself and his parents were born, although situated in different
localities. On the death of parents their land is divided among the
children, when both sexes share alike, with this exception, that the
youngest of the family receives the largest share. Marriage does not
affect the permanency of the right of a woman to any landed property
which may have come into her possession. Lastly, an old man occasionally
so disposes of his property that a favourite child may obtain a larger
proportion than he could afterwards claim as his inheritance.

Neither at Cape York, nor in any of the Islands of Torres Strait, so far
as I am aware, do the aborigines appear to have formed an idea of the
existence of a Supreme Being; the absence of this belief may appear
questionable, but my informant, Giaom, spoke quite decidedly on this
point, having frequently made it the subject of conversation with the
Kowrarega blacks.

TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.

The singular belief in the transmigration of souls, which is general
among the whole of the Australian tribes, so far as known, also extends
to the islands of Torres Strait. The people holding it imagine that,
immediately after death, they are changed into white people or Europeans,
and as such pass the second and final period of their existence; nor is
it any part of this creed that future rewards and punishments are
awarded. It may readily be imagined that when ignorant and superstitious
savage tribes, such as those under consideration, were first visited by
Europeans, it was natural for them to look with wonder upon beings so
strangely different from themselves, and so infinitely superior in the
powers conferred by civilisation, and to associate so much that was
wonderful with the idea of supernatural agency. At Darnley Island, the
Prince of Wales Islands, and Cape York, the word used at each place to
signify a white man, also means a ghost.* The Cape York people even went
so far as to recognise in several of our officers and others in the ship,
the ghosts of departed friends to whom they might have borne some fa