TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.

The singular belief in the transmigration of souls, which is general
among the whole of the Australian tribes, so far as known, also extends
to the islands of Torres Strait. The people holding it imagine that,
immediately after death, they are changed into white people or Europeans,
and as such pass the second and final period of their existence; nor is
it any part of this creed that future rewards and punishments are
awarded. It may readily be imagined that when ignorant and superstitious
savage tribes, such as those under consideration, were first visited by
Europeans, it was natural for them to look with wonder upon beings so
strangely different from themselves, and so infinitely superior in the
powers conferred by civilisation, and to associate so much that was
wonderful with the idea of supernatural agency. At Darnley Island, the
Prince of Wales Islands, and Cape York, the word used at each place to
signify a white man, also means a ghost.* The Cape York people even went
so far as to recognise in several of our officers and others in the ship,
the ghosts of departed friends to whom they might have borne some fancied
resemblance, and, in consequence, under the new names of Tamu, Tarka,
etc. they were claimed as relations, and entitled to all the privileges
of such.

(*Footnote. Frequently when the children were teasing Giaom, they would
be gravely reproved by some elderly person telling them to leave her, as
"poor thing! she is nothing, only a ghost!" (igur! uri longa, mata
markai.))

SUPERSTITIONS.

Among many superstitions held by the Prince of Wales islanders, they are