as
happening and felt grieved, so they determined to come and live on the
earth again to try and bring relief to the drought-stricken people.
Down they came and set to work to excavate springs. They scooped out
earth and dug, deeper and deeper, until at length after many of them
gave in from exhaustion, those that were left were rewarded by seeing
springs bubble up.

The first of those that they made was at Yantabulla, which bears their
name to this day.

The blacks were delighted at having watering-places which neither a
drought nor the fiercest sun could dry up. The Yantas were not
contented with this nor with the other springs they made. They
determined to excavate a whole plain, and turn it into a lake so deep
that the sun could never dry it, and which would be full of fish for
the tribes.

They went to Kinggle and there began their work. On they toiled
unceasingly, but work as they would they could not complete their
scheme, for one after another wearied and died, until at last nothing
was left on the plain but the mud springs under the surface and the
graves of the Yantas on top. No blacks will cross Kinggle plains lest
some of these spirits arise through the openings of their graves.

This legend shows what a disheartening country the West is in a
drought. When even the spirits gave in, how can ordinary men succeed?
But indeed it is not ordinary men who do, but our 'Western heroes,' as
Will Ogilvie calls them, who wear their cross of bronze on neck and
cheek in the country where 'the green fades into grey.'

CHAPTER XII

THE TRAPPING OF GAME

Some of the blacks' methods of catching game I have seen practised,
some have long since died out of use.

Of course the sportsmen knew the favourite watering-holes of the game.
At such a place they made a rough break at each side, leaving an
opening where the track was. Along this track they would lay a net with
one end on the edge of the water; in the water they put sticks on the
ends of which the birds rest to drink, the other ends are out in the
trap. They would make a hole low down on each side of the net, and a
man would hide in each.

A bird's watering-place, where the blacks trap them, is called
Dheelgoolee. When the Dheelgoolee trapping begins, on the first day
those who go out hunting must bring home their game alive to give the
man at the Dheelgoolee luck. Then they never try to catch an emu or
kangaroo, only iguana, opossum, piggiebillah, pad