spirits. Here, also, as I have elsewhere observed, they fancy that after
death they reappear as whites; the bones of the dead are frequently
carried from place to place.

The reader will remember the native named Alligator, whom I have
mentioned on a previous visit to Port Essington. I witnessed in his
family an instance of affection for a departed child, which, though it
exhibited itself in this peculiar manner, was extremely touching. The
wife had treasured up the bones of the little one, and constantly carried
them about with her, not as a memento mori, but as an object whereon to
expend her tenderest emotions, whenever they swelled within her breast.
At such times she would put together these bones with a rapidity that
supposed a wonderful knowledge of osteology, and set them up that she
might weep over them. Perhaps, in her imagination, as she performed this
melancholy rite, the ghastly framework before her became indued with the
comely form of infancy; bright eyes once more sparkled in those hollow
cells, and a smile of ineffable delight hung where, in reality, was
naught but the hideous grin of death. I exceedingly regret that the
mother who could feel so finely was some time afterwards over-persuaded
to part with the bones of her child.

I may here mention that the medical officer of the settlement was in the
habit of extracting teeth for the natives, who found the European method
much more easy than their own mode of knocking them out. The supercargo
of a vessel, learning this fact, was anxious to become a purchaser of
teeth to some extent for the London market, being persuaded that they
would find a ready sale among the dentists; and it is more than probable
that many of our fair ladies at home are indebted for the pearls on which
the poets exhaust so much of their fancy to the rude natives of
Australia.