CADAVER-POISON OF THE AUSTRALIAN NATIVES.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1540, 24 January 1879, Page 3

CADAVER-POISON OF THE AUSTRALIAN NATIVES.

The only objection to the following horrible description of a supposed custom of the Australian natives is that it is pure invention. Taplin has been shamefully imposing upon the credulity of our respectable contemporary, the “Scientific American,” which says: According to Taplin, the inhabitants of the lower Murray district of Australia, who are comprised under the name of Narrinjeris, make use of a most destructive and terrible poison for killing their enemies, namely, the specific animal poison developed in human corpses. The instrument used for inoculating an enemy with it is called neiljori. The natives state that they obtained the knowledge of this poison from the inhabitants along the upper Murray. It has at present become a most destructive weapon in the hands of the natives, who adopted it with so much the more eagerness as their former belief in charms is gradually dying out. The practice of the nieljeri is very much facilitated by the fact that tiie natives do not bury their dead, but preserve them above ground. Into such a corpse the point of a spear, consisting of a sharp-pointed piece of human bone, six or eight inches long, is inserted. Then a bunch of hairs or feathers is saturated with the fat of the decomposing body, and tied about the pointed bone. This apparatus is the nieljeri, With it the murderer stealthily approaches his victim, slightly scratches the skin with the sharp poisoned point, and, if undetected —as often happens in consequence of the narcotic sleep of the natives after one of their gigantic meals—he steals away unsuspected. Soon the terrible effects of the cadaveric poisoning make their appearance, and the 'person generally dies under the most excruciating pains.