WEATHER DISTURBERS 247 



of sand. In the morning the flesh is thoroughly cooked. 

 The plastron (lower shell) is lifted off, and in the carapace 

 is a rich, thick soup. No blood or any of the juices of 

 the meat have gone to waste — the finest of meat extracts, 

 the very quintessence of turtle, remains. What would 

 your gourmands give for a plate of this genuine article ? 

 Who may say he has tasted turtle soup — pure and 

 unadulterated — unless he has " Kummaoried " his turtle to 

 obtain it ? With balls of grass the blacks sop up the brown 

 oily soup, loudly smacking and sucking their lips to 

 emphasise appreciation. Then there are the white flesh 

 and the glutin, the best of all fattening foods ; and having 

 eaten to repletion for a couple of days, the diet palls, 

 and they begin to speak in shockingly disrespectful terms 

 of turtle. 



Weather Disturbers 



In the arid parts of Australia, where rain rarely occurs, 

 the blacks have acquired much out-of-the-way knowledge 

 on the means of obtaining water. White men, unable to 

 read the secret signs of its existence, have perished in all 

 the agonies of thirst in country in which water, from a 

 black fellow's point of view, was plentiful and compara- 

 tively easy to reach. Here there is never any anxiety on 

 the subject. The minds of the blacks turn rather upon 

 attempts to account for the rain, at times excessive and 

 discomforting. Bad weather, in common with other 

 untoward circumstances, is frequently ascribed to the 

 machinations of evilly disposed boys. A boy may accept 

 the credit or have the greatness thrust upon him of the 

 manufacture of a gale which has brought about general 

 discomfort, and to spite him, regardless of consequence 

 to others, another boy will promise a still more destructive 

 breeze next year. And so the game of wanton interference 

 with the meteorological conditions of the continent 

 proceeds, each successive infliction being arranged to serve 

 out the author of the one preceding. It may be that the 

 instigator of a gale lives far away, at the Palm Islands, 



