LEGENDS OF LAKE EYRE TRIBES. 529 
quite unknown to him. Then he saw many great animals, 
and marched among them, seeking the particular one he was 
in search of. At length he found him, and prepared to 
throw his boomerang, and then pierce him with his spear. 
But the animal spoke to him, saying, ‘“‘ If thou comest to me 
as a friend, lay down thy kirha and kalti.”17 Much sur- 
prised, he said, ‘“Yidni barkana nganti yatani-mara 
nganai?”’ (‘Thou also animal speech-gifted art?”) He 
laid down his weapons, and both grappled together. The 
animal tried to seize his throat, but he threw it down and 
strangled it. Having done this he did not know what to do 
next. He could not cook it, because it was mura to him.!8 
He could not carry it home, because he was worn out with 
his long marching. Then he decided to swallow it whole 
and raw. lying down on the ground, face downwards and 
opposite to it, he began at the head to slowly draw it into 
himself. Then he noticed as he turned himself round that 
his body was becoming longer and longer, until at length he 
had become an animal. When he had swallowed the whole 
animal except the tail, this suddenly struck him in the eye 
and blinded him. He was bent double with pain, and 
because he could not see he did not know how to find his 
way back. Then he remembered that the wind had been 
blowing from his home, but when he drew in a breath and 
smelled it, it was a strange wind from the north. Then he 
smelled to the east, but that also was strange to him. After 
waiting for a time he drew ina breath from the west, and 
recognised it as the wind blowing from his home. Then he 
got up and travelled against the wind. When it ceased to 
blow-he rested himself ; when it again commenced he again 
travelled, until after a time he opened his eyes and could 
see, and he found that his body was wonderfully marked. 
The way by which Nura-wordu-bununa went to his home 
is now the course of the Cooper, and its bends and curves 
were made by his serpentine movements as he travelled. 
Directly the covering had fallen from his eyes his sight 
became stronger and clearer, and the markings on his body 
were brighter and more distinct. Thus, it was that at Kalyn- 
maru?9 he had become covered with a beautiful new skin 
7 Mura (inquiries still being made). 
% Kalyumaru is a large sheet of water in the Cooper, near the Queensland 
boundary, where I established my depét on my second expedition in 1862. 
“Kalyu ” is an-“ acacia,” and “maru” is “a wide extent of country.’ 
“Ngapa’”’ is “ water,’’ and “ ngayimala” is “throat or swallow.” A 
part of the Cooper wheer it is confined between high banks, and being thus 
narrowed, is culled the throat of the water. 
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