track, and have buried in it a piece of broken bottle. The magic influence, he believed, caused it to enter his foot. When following down Cooper’s Creek in search of Burke’s party, we were followed one day by a large number of blackfellows, who were much interested in looking at and measuring the footprints of the horses and camels. My blackboy, from the Darling River, rode up to me, with the utmost alarm exhibited in his face, and exclaimed, ‘Look at these wild blackfellows!’ I said, ‘Well, they are all right.’ He replied, ‘I am sure those fellows are putting poison in my footsteps!’ ”[1] Amongst the Karens of Burma, evil-disposed persons “keep poisoned fangs in their possession for the purpose of killing people. These they thrust into the footmarks of the person they wish to kill, who soon finds himself with a sore foot, and the marks on it as bitten by a dog. The sore becomes rapidly worse and worse till death ensues.”[2] The Damaras of South Africa take earth from the footprints of a lion and throw it on the track of an enemy, with the wish, “May the lion kill you.”[3] This superstition is turned to account by hunters in many parts of the world for the purpose of running down the game. Thus, a German huntsman will stick a nail taken from a coffin into the fresh spoor of the animal he is hunting, believing that this will prevent the quarry from leaving the hunting-ground.[4] Australian blacks put hot embers in the tracks of the animals they are pursuing;[5] Hottentot hunters throw into the air a handful of sand taken from the footprints of the game, believing that this will bring the animal down;[6] and Ojebway Indians place “medicine” on the first deer’s or
- ↑ Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 250. Cp. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i, 476 seq.
- ↑ Mason, “The Karens,” Journal R. Asiatic Soc., 1868, pt. ii, p. 149.
- ↑ Josaphat Hahn, “Die Ovaherero,” Zeitschrift d. Gesell. f. Erdkunde zu Berlin, iv, 503.
- ↑ Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube², § 186.
- ↑ Dawson, Australian Aborigines, 54.
- ↑ Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-‖ Goam, p. 84 seq.
