n it
procures a fresh supply for its fires. The stars are supposed to be the
dwellings of departed chiefs. The serpent is believed to contain the
spirit of a real devil. To eat the kidney of an enemy, it is thought,
imparts to the one who swallows it the strength of the dead man. Any
number above five these blacks express by saying, "It is as the
leaves,"--not to be counted. The white man's locomotive is an imprisoned
fire-devil, kept under control by water. The lightning is the angry
expression of some outraged god.

One singular tradition which this people have is to the following
effect: In the beginning there was no death. The first created men and
women were told not to go near a certain tree, in which lived a sacred
bat. The woman one day approached the tree, whereupon the bat flew away;
and after that came death. One would be glad to know if this fable
antedates that more familiar and not dissimilar one of the Garden of
Eden.

The period of the total extinction of this race cannot be far distant.
Queensland is the only province where the Australian aborigines are
still an element worth taking into account. Statistics show that they
are dying at the rate of ten per cent per annum! The author asked an
intelligent citizen of Brisbane what could be the cause of such
mortality. "Oh," said he, in an airy way, "fire-arms and fire-water are
doing the business for these black fellows." A remarkably comprehensive
temperance lecture embraced in a single line, formulated by an old chief
of these natives, occurs to us in this connection. He was one of the
Brisbane tribe, and on a certain occasion said to a Government agent:
"One drink is too much; two is not half enough." To taste was to drink
to excess; abstinence with these people as with many white men is easy
enough, but temperance in the use of spirits impossible.

The natives will accept work from the whites when driven to do so by
want of food. Some of them work well and are liberally paid for it; but
to insure this, liquor must be carefully kept from them. A single glass
demoralizes, a second draught intoxicates. A drinking native is of no
use to himself or any one else; and if he can get the means he rapidly
drinks himself to death. The women are undersize as compared with the
average of white people; but the males are athletic, excelling as
axe-men and bullock-drivers, while on the sea-coast, when they work at
all, they are good hands at the oar. Their hair is no