for punishment—a rare occurrence among civilized men. They are by no means, more than other men, deficient in gratitude; and, as in the Swan District some of the heads of families were most useful to the Government in assisting to preserve peace and harmony between their people and the settlers, so in the North a chief whose name, Mullagough, should be recorded, was the means of the white men being admitted to peaceful settlement. Commonly the virtues of civilization are credited to all the settlers, collectively, and the vices of savage life, ignoring all virtues, to each native individually.
The natives of West Australia are, like other savages, very superstitious. The power, especially for evil, of their Bolyas or sorcerers is a constant source of terror to them; they have also their Karakols or medicine men, able to inflict as well as cure diseases; and probably the caves in which rude paintings and carvings have been found, especially on the North Coast, were appropriated to their use. They also have great fear of an evil spirit, Jingy, whom they suppose to inhabit the more deep and gloomy recesses of the hills; and of an imaginary monster, Wangul, inhabiting the fresh waters, whose principal victims are the women. Each family has its Kobong or cognizance, some animal or vegetable for which they have a superstitious reverence, and which is therefore not used as food by the family who adopt it.
Circumcision is practised by some families. Mr. J. Forrest says the natives who practise circumcision are found to the East and North of a line drawn from Point Culver on the South Coast by Mounts Ragged, Jeramungup and the Wongon Hills to the Geraldine Mine on the Murchison River, where the line from thence carried Northerly approaches nearer the coast. The sexes are
