d water I might be certain my tanks would never
go dry while they were on guard. She asked one of my Black-but-Comelys,
a very stalwart young woman, to help her lift one of these posts into
the garden where she wanted to erect it. The girl took hold of one end,
but in a little while dropped it, said it was too heavy. Old Bootha got
furious.

'I get the spirits to help me,' she said, and started a little
sing-song, then shouldered the post herself and carried it in. These
posts are painted red, black, and white, with a snaky pattern, the
Kurreah sign, on them. She also planted in my garden two other
witch-poles, one painted red and having a cross-bar about midway down
it from which raddled strings were attached to the top; this was to
keep away the Euloowayi, black fellows possessed of devils, who came
from behind the sunset.

The other was a plain red-painted, tapering pine-pole which she said,
when it fell to the ground, would tell of the death of some one related
to an inmate of the house. Should it lean towards the house it foretold
misfortune; or if she were any time away, when she was returning she
would send her Mullee Mullee to sit on the top and bend it just to let
us know. This pole would also keep away the spirits of the dead from
the house during her absence. While she was away there would be no one
to come and clear the place of evil by smoking the Budtha twigs all
round it, as she always did if I were alone and, she thought, in need
of protection.

Old Bootha has what she calls a wi-mouyan, clever-stick. It is about
six feet long, great lumps of beefwood gum making knobs on it at
intervals; between each knob it is painted. Armed with this stick, a
piece of crystal, some green twigs, and sometimes a stick with a bunch
of feathers on top, and a large flat stone, she goes out to make rain.
The crystal and stone she puts under the water in the creek, the
feathered stick she erects on the edge of the water, then goes in and
splashes about with green twigs, singing all the time.

After a while she gets out and parades the bank with the wi-mouyan,
singing a rain-song which charms some of the water out of the creek
into the clouds, whence it falls where she directs it. Once my garden
of roses looked very wilted. I asked Bootha to make rain, but just then
she was very offended with Matah. One of her dogs had been poisoned,
she would make no rain on his country. However, at last she said she
would make some for