Mevieics — Prof. J. W. Gregory's Dead Heart of Australia. 371 



forest-roof increased in number and size, until they touclied one 

 another, and all the sky became one continuous hole ; wherefore the 

 sky is called ' Puri Wilpanina,' which means ' Great Hole.' 



" At times, when the country is wasted by prolonged drought, or 

 the floods from the Queensland hills lie too long upon the hiniting- 

 grounds, the aborigines make pilgrimage to the bones of the 

 Kadimakara. There corroborees are held, at which blood sacrifices 

 are offered and dances performed to appease the spirits of the dead 

 Kadimakara, and persuade them to intercede with those who still 

 dwell in the sky and control the clouds and rain. 



"This legend is part of the folk-lore of the Dieri, a tribe found in 

 the country along Cooper's Creek, eastward of Lake Eyre. The 

 same legend is told by other tribes in the same district of Central 

 Australia, with variations in the form of names and in other details. 

 It may have arisen as a pure fiction, invented by some imaginative, 

 story-telling native, to explain why large bones are scattered over 

 the bed of Cooper's Creek. It may, on the other hand, be a shadowy 

 reminiscence of the geographical conditions which existed in some 

 distant ancestral home of the aborigines, or of those which prevailed 

 in Central Australia at some remote period. 



" What geographical conditions, it may be asked, could have 

 given rise to such a legend ? 



" To the dweller in the open down or moorland, the idea that the 

 vault of heaven could be upheld by trees, or that the open, transpai-ent 

 sky could support heavy animals of flesh and bone, seems the idlest 

 fancy. But to a man who knows the tropical forest, it appears 

 inevitable that the first attempts by primitive forest-people to 

 explain the world around them must closely follow the lines of the 

 Kadimakara legend. 



" If the pygmies of the East African forests have any theory of the 

 limited universe known to them, they probably regard it as a two- 

 storied structure in which they occupy the lower floor. They live 

 in a jungle of bamboos and dense undergrowth, while high above 

 them is a thick, felted layer of foliage and creepers, upheld by the 

 trunks of lofty junipers, which rise straight to a great height before 

 they branch. The tangled layer of vegetation overhead deprives the 

 natives of any knowledge of the world above the tree-tops. They 

 are covered by a sheet as opaque and as continuous as a roof slightly 

 out of repair. In that roof live monkeys and birds and beasts, that 

 never descend to the ground below ; while the animals that live and 

 move and have their being in the undergrowth are equally cut off from 

 the world above. The primitive hunter has some slight knowledge of 

 the jungle roof above him. He hears the harsh halloa of the colobus, 

 the shrill cry of the birds when they fall a prey to snakes or 

 monkeys ; his keen eye can detect the prized fur of the colobus 

 despite its close resemblance to the long, hanging masses of grey 

 bearded lichen that drape the black branches of the trees. But the 

 dweller in the underlying jungle knows nothing of the region above 

 the tree-tops. In the dry season, when the forest is not covered in 

 mist, he may see the stars slowly crossing the holes in the roof; but 



