Note 454 — VII HUNTING AND FISHING RACES

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, p. 45. To show the length to which this belief is carried, the following story may be quoted. ‘A woman, while clearing out a well, was bitten in the thumb by a black snake. It began to swell immediately, and in the short space of twenty-four hours the woman was a corpse. Still it was asserted that it was not an accident, but that the deceased had pointed out a certain aborigine as her murderer’ (Wilhelmi, loc. cit., p. 191). In this case no killing actually followed, though it nearly did so.