particular tree are the spirits of the Moungun, or armless
women, and when the wind blows you could hear them wailing. Their cruel
husband chopped their arms off because they could not get him the honey
he wanted, and their spirits have wailed ever since.

Across the creek is another very old tree, having one hollow part in
which is said to be secreted a shell which old Wurrunnah, the traveller
of the tribes, and the first to see the sea, brought back. No one would
dare to touch the shell. The tribe of a neighbouring creek, when we
were first at the station, used to threaten to come and get it, but the
men of the local tribe used to muster to protect it from desecration
even at the expense of their lives.

The Minggah by the garden I have told you of before. Further down the
creek are others.

At Weetalibah was the tree from which Byamee cut the first Gayandi.
This tree was burnt by travellers a few years ago. The blacks were
furious: the sacred tree of Byamee burnt by the white devils! There are
trees, too, considered sacred, from which Byamee cut honey and marked
them for his own, just as a man even now, on finding a bee's nest and
not being able to stay and get it, marks a tree, which for any one else
to touch is theft.

A little way from the head station was an outcrop of white stones.
These are said to be fossilised bones of Boogoodoogahdah's victims. She
was a cannibal woman who had hundreds of dogs; with them she used to
round up blacks and kill them, and she and her dogs ate them. At last
she was outwitted and killed herself, and her spirit flew out as a bird
from her heart. This bird haunts burial grounds, and if in a drought
any one can run it down and make it cry out, rain will fall.

During a drought one of these birds came into my garden, hearing which
the blacks said rain would come soon, and it did. In another drought
when the rainmakers had failed, some of the old blacks saw a rain-bird
and hunted it, but could not get it to call out.

Geologists say there should be diamonds along some of the old
water-courses of the Moorilla ridges. Perhaps the white stone that the
blacks talk about, which shows a light at night, and has, they say, a
devil in it, is a diamond. Ruskin rather thought there was a devil in
diamonds, making women do all sorts of evil to possess them. The blacks
told me that a Queensland tribe had a marvellous stone which at great
gatherings they show. Taking those who are privileged t