of a
dead man, in their opinion, survives and goes to and fro on the earth
visiting the places where his forefathers camped in days of old and
destined to be born again of a woman at some future time, when the rains
have fallen and bleached his bones.[113] But why these primitive
philosophers should deny the privilege of immortality to women and
reserve it exclusively for men, is not manifest. All other Central
Australian tribes appear to admit the rights of women equally with the
rights of men in a life beyond the grave.

[Sidenote: Central Australian theory as to the state of the dead.
Certain conspicuous features of the landscape supposed to be tenanted by
the souls of the dead waiting to be born again.]

With regard to the state of the souls of the dead in the intervals
between their successive reincarnations, the opinions of the Central
Australian savages are clear and definite. Most civilised races who
believe in the immortality of the soul have found themselves compelled
to confess that, however immortal the spirits of the departed may be,
they do not present themselves commonly to our eyes or ears, nor meddle
much with the affairs of the living; hence the survivors have for the
most part inferred that the dead do not hover invisible in our midst,
but that they dwell somewhere, far away, in the height of heaven, or in
the depth of earth, or in Islands of the Blest beyond the sea where the
sun goes down. Not so with the simple aborigines of Australia. They
imagine that the spirits of the dead continue to haunt their native land
and especially certain striking natural features of the landscape, it
may be a pool of water in a deep gorge of the barren hills, or a
solitary tree in the sun-baked plains, or a great rock that affords a
welcome shade in the sultry noon. Such spots are thought to be tenanted
by the souls of the departed waiting to be born again. There they lurk,
constantly on the look-out for passing women into whom they may enter,
and from whom in due time they may be born as infants. It matters not
whether the woman be married or unmarried, a matron or a maid, a
blooming girl or a withered hag: any woman may conceive directly by the
entrance into her of one of these disembodied spirits; but the natives
have shrewdly observed that the spirits shew a decided preference for
plump young women. Hence when such a damsel is passing near a plot of
haunted ground, if she does not wish to become a mother, she wi