174 SUPERSTITIONS OF NORTH QUEENSLAND ABORIGINES, 
acquaintance with astronomy than most colonists possess. The 
following facts are, however, of some interest:—The sun they 
regard as a female; the moon—Ngegarru—they say is a male; 
and the members of one tribe, on the Saxby river, believe that 
it is a black-fellow, who at one time killed a lot of their people, 
and whom they afterwards burnt, and still point to the shadows 
on the moon’s surface as being the scars which resulted from 
this execution. The Mycoolon blacks also explain the rising and 
setting of these luminaries, as well as that of the stars, by the 
supposition that they go beneath the earth through a hole, 
coming up again on the eastern side. 
The evening star they have named Yumby which is their 
name for dog. The morning star is known as Yaboroo—bitch. 
Orion’s Belt, Marbarungal, they believe to be a great hunter 
who formerly dwelt amongst them. 
The two dark starless spaces in the Milky Way are known as 
Goonga, and are believed to be two very old blacks who, a great 
while back, met their fate at Taldora on the Saxby River, where 
they were speared at a Bora meeting. 
Two ‘black clouds,” near the Southern Cross are named 
Innkerberry—the emu. 
They occasionally hear a report at the time of a falling star: 
this they have named Goonbor, in allusion to a game in which 
the black fellows carry one another and in which the bearer lets 
him that is borne fall, thus occasioning a noise. 
The Pleiads are known as Munkine—the word vsed to 
express the idea of a maiden or unmarried girl. 
The Mycoolon blacks have no name for a comet, ‘the appear- 
ance of which they regard with dread.* 
* With reference to the subject of the knowledge of Astronomy 
possessed by the Aborigines, much information may be gathered from a 
study of a paper on the subject by Mr. W. E. Stanbridge in the Trans- 
actions of the “ Philosophical Institute of Victoria,” Vol. II., pp. 
137-40, Melbourne, 1857, (partly reproduced by Mr. Brough Smith, “The 
Aborigines of Victoria,” Vol. I., pp. 432-4) the statements in which have 
