"And say supernal powers! who deeply scan Heaven's dark decrees, unfathomed yet by man, When shall the world call down, to cleanse her shame, That embryo spirit, yet without a name."
The blacks commenced their obsequies with a lugubrious mien; and after collecting the bodies, which numbered nearly a hundred, prepared to entomb them according to their own peculiar custom. Usually, upon the death of a black, the surviving relatives bemoan their loss by besmearing themselves with coloured clay or mud, and venting their grief for days in fasting, frantic gestures, and wails; while the gin (if the deceased be a man possessed of one) covers her head with white feathers, which species of mourning she wears for a "moon," _i.e._, a month. On this occasion, however, the deceased were nearly all the members of separate families, and the survivors had little sympathy for them, except in common; consequently, the last rites were performed in uniform silence.
For each body was erected four forked posts (standing about four feet high), on which were formed a platform of boughs, so as to make a sort of foliate table to support the lifeless clay. The bodies, when duly placed, were then over-spread with long dry grass, and, afterwards, with an outer covering of boughs, which, to be prevented being removed by the weather, were tied together at each end as a bundle of sticks. These impromptu sepulchres were elevated from the ground just sufficiently to prevent the access of the native dogs, and protected overhead from the molestation of carnivorous birds by the covering we have described. They are, however, no more defended, than a subterranean tenement would be, from the depredations of insects and vermin; the most numerous of which, who attack this, or any other carrion in the Australian bush, being ants; which have rightly been designated "nature's scavengers."
In such encasements it is not to be wondered at that the flesh is speedily removed from the bones; and, after a short time, they stand inoffensive monuments to the memory of departed friends. They remain intact for years; until, either consumed by some bush fire, washed away by some gigantic flood, or the supports give way under the decay of successive seasons, the sepulchre and its enshrined contents fall together to the earth to reunite with their parent dust.