I remembered the religious function at which he was confirmed by the Bishop of Melbourne. But I have not made use of anything else which I may have heard from him, other than that remarkable opinion. He took no part in the Jeraeil when it was revived, nor did he know of the intention to hold the ceremonies when the old men were ready for them.
The men from whom I obtained the Kurnai views on this subject, and who took the most prominent part in the Jeraeil ceremonies, were boys or youths when Gippsland was settled by the whites in 1844. Two years earlier Angus M'Millan had entered it from New South Wales and made known, on his return, its value as a pastoral district.
Twenty years later, when I came to know the Kurnai men just mentioned, the old men of 1844 had mostly died off, or been killed in the troublous times of early settlement.
It was their sons who were now men of the tribe, say between thirty and forty years of age, and they had been initiated by their fathers probably before 1855.
When the Jeraeil was held at my instance, these men conducted them, and they assured me that they did so exactly as "the old men" had done when they themselves were initiated. In answer to inquiries about the legends told at the ceremonies, including that of Mungan-ngaua and his son Tundun, they said, "The old men told us so."
As to the possibility of this belief having been introduced by blacks from the settled districts of New South Wales and Victoria, it will suffice to say that the Kurnai were isolated from other tribes by the nature of the country surrounding them. Moreover, they did not attend the ceremonies of any other tribe, nor did they receive visitors at theirs.
As to the tribes which have ceremonies of the western type, I must now point out that missions have been in existence in the Narrang-ga, the Parnkalla, the Dieri, and the Arunta tribes for long periods. In all of them, with perhaps the exception of the Narrang-ga, the missionaries have taught and preached in the native language, and as to the Arunta have, I believe, evolved a name for the Deity
