st inaccessible tree, apparently asleep."(3)
There was one Birraark at least to every clan. The Kurnai gave the name
of "Brewin" (a powerful evil spirit) to a Birraark who was once carried
away for several days by the Mrarts or spirits.(4) It is a belief with
the Australians, as, according to Bosman, it was with the people of
the Gold Coast, that a very powerful wizard lives far inland, and the
Negroes held that to this warlock the spirits of the dead went to be
judged according to the merit of their actions in life. Here we have a
doctrine answering to the Greek belief in "the wizard Minos," Aeacus,
and Rhadamanthus, and to the Egyptian idea of Osiris as judge of the
departed.(5) The pretensions of the sorcerer to converse with the dead
are attested by Mr. Brough Smyth.(6) "A sorcerer lying on his stomach
spoke to the deceased, and the other sitting by his side received the
precious messages which the dead man told." As a natural result of these
beliefs, the Australian necromant has great power in the tribe. Mr.
Howitt mentions a case in which a group of kindred, ceasing to use their
old totemistic surname, called themselves the children of a famous
dead Birraark, who thus became an eponymous hero, like Ion among the
Ionians.(7) Among the Scotch Highlanders the position and practice
of the seer were very like those of the Birraark. "A person," says
Scott,(8) "was wrapped up in the skin of a newly slain bullock and
deposited beside a waterfall or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some
other strange, wild and unusual situation, where the scenery around him
suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation he revolved
in his mind the question proposed and whatever was impressed on him by
his exalted imagination PASSED FOR THE INSPIRATION OF THE DISEMBODIED
SPIRITS who haunt these desolate recesses." A number of examples are
given in Martin's Description of the Western Islands.(9) In the Century
magazine (July, 1882) is a very full report of Thlinkeet medicine-men
and metamorphoses.

(1) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 253.

(2) Page 254.

(3) In the Jesuit Relations (1637), p. 51, we read that the Red Indian
sorcerer or Jossakeed was credited with power to vanish suddenly away
out of sight of the men standing around him. Of him, as of Homeric
gods, it might be said, "Who has power to see him come or go against his
will?"

(4) Here, in the first edition, occurred the following passage: "The
conception of Brewin