careless dignity; "I tell him let her wonga (i. e. talk)—"morning all right."
Of religion the natives appear to possess but the merest rudiments, and no forms of worship whatever—unless their manner of propitiating the bad spirit Jingy can be considered such—though a faint type of a priesthood may be found in the Bollia men, as those persons are called who pretend to know Jingy's manoeuvres on given occasions, and are continually ready to steal a march upon him. Khourabene had been a Bollia man, and for that very reason appeared to believe as little as might be in the manifestations of Jingy as reported by the natives in general, such as frightening people in the bush as a bogy,—laying claim to the gum on certain trees which were pointed out to us, and knocking loudly in the night on the huts of natives who gathered it,—appearing in the likeness of a bird with long legs and a snout to a girl who went to drink at a pond after dark, whereby the said girl "berry near have a fit,"—and so on; but on one point, where Jingy throws off the mask, and shows himself in his true colours as the "murderer from the beginning," the faith of our poor savage friend was implicit.
A week after a native's death, his grave is visited by the Bollia men, to discern whether Jingy's track can be found anywhere near it or on it; and, in case it is pronounced visible, the nearest male relative of the dead must then wander away in search of a person of another tribe, whom he is necessitated to kill, that the departed soul may find rest. The chief mourner is restless and ill at ease till this supposedly pious duty has been fulfilled; after which, things drop into their ordinary course, and
