they could cross rivers and
seas without any trouble, they would never discover how to cross them
for themselves. I am a witch, and if I had chosen I could easily have
cast my spells over the Bad One, and have made him deliver them to
you the first day you came into my hut. But then you would never have
fasted, and never have planned how to get what you wanted, and never
have known the good spirits, and would have been fat and idle to the end
of your days. And now go; in that hut, which you can just see far away,
live your father and mother, who are old people now, and need a son to
hunt for them. You have done what you were set to do, and I need you no
more.'

Then Ball-Carrier remembered his parents and went back to them.

[From Bureau of Ethnology. 'Indian Folklore.']

The Bunyip

Long, long ago, far, far away on the other side of the world, some young
men left the camp where they lived to get some food for their wives and
children. The sun was hot, but they liked heat, and as they went they
ran races and tried who could hurl his spear the farthest, or was
cleverest in throwing a strange weapon called a boomerang, which always
returns to the thrower. They did not get on very fast at this rate, but
presently they reached a flat place that in time of flood was full of
water, but was now, in the height of summer, only a set of pools, each
surrounded with a fringe of plants, with bulrushes standing in the
inside of all. In that country the people are fond of the roots of
bulrushes, which they think as good as onions, and one of the young men
said that they had better collect some of the roots and carry them back
to the camp. It did not take them long to weave the tops of the willows
into a basket, and they were just going to wade into the water and pull
up the bulrush roots when a youth suddenly called out: 'After all, why
should we waste our time in doing work that is only fit for women and
children? Let them come and get the roots for themselves; but we will
fish for eels and anything else we can get.'

This delighted the rest of the party, and they all began to arrange
their fishing lines, made from the bark of the yellow mimosa, and to
search for bait for their hooks. Most of them used worms, but one, who
had put a piece of raw meat for dinner into his skin wallet, cut off a
little bit and baited his line with it, unseen by his companions.

For a long time they cast patiently, without receiving a singl