ABORIGINAL TRIBES OF NEW SOUTH WALES AND VICTORIA. 359 



hunt much himself, so he had several dogs to help him. 

 His dogs were the bull-dog ant, the brown snake and some 

 others. The two young fellows mostly accompanied the 

 old man and assisted him in procuring food, but lie did not 

 treat them well. If they caught a number of opossums 

 and brought them to the camp, Giwa used to cook them, 

 split them open, and eat the fleshy parts of the legs and 

 all the choice portions of the bodies himself, giving the 

 young men the back-bones and the heads. When they 

 brought home a buck opossum for themselves, old Giwa 

 waited till their backs were turned, and cutoff the opossum's 

 scrotal pouch with its contents, healing up the wound by 

 his magic, and then insisted that the animal was a doe, 

 which, consequently, the youths were forbidden to eat, by 

 the tribal laws. 



Owing to his continual greediness the lads determined to 

 separate from the old man, but were rather afraid of his 

 powers as a wizard. They used to lie behind him in the 

 camp, and, because he could not turn round easily, he called 

 out "Are you fellows there ? " and they answered "Yes." 

 He rather suspected they would leave him, so he asked this 

 question frequently. At last they started off early one 

 morning, but before doing so they defecated copiously on 

 the ground a little way from the old fellow, and by their 

 gramarye conferred the power of speech upon the deposit, 

 to enable it to respond to Giwa's queries. Every time the 

 moon enquired "Are you fellows there?" the ordure replied 

 in the affirmative. 



The young men came upon an emu, which they speared 

 and carried on the top of a flat rock which protruded a few 

 feet above the surface of the ground. Having lit a Are on 

 the rock, they commenced cooking the emu, but suddenly 

 remembered that this bird was taboo to them, and consulted 

 as to how this difficulty could be surmounted. Being clever 



