ower of pebbles as seeming to fall
from the heads and mouths of the rivals, and should by chance any one
steal any of these as they fall, the power of the original possessor
would be lessened. The dying bequeath these stones, their most precious
possessions, to the living wirreenun most nearly related to them.

The wirreenun's health and power not only depend upon his crystals and
yunbeai, but also on his Minggah; should an accident happen to that,
unless he has another, he will die--in any case, he will sicken. Many of
the legends deal with the magic of these spirit-animated trees.

They are places of refuge in time of danger; no one save the wirreenun,
whose spirit-tree it was, would dare to touch a refugee at a Minggah;
and should the sanctuary be a Goomarh, or spirit-stone, not even a
wirreenun would dare to interfere, so that it is a perfectly safe
sanctuary from humanly dealt evil. But a refugee at a Minggah or
Goomarh runs a great risk of incurring the wrath of the spirits, for
Minggah are taboo to all but their own wirreenun.

There was a Minggah, a great gaunt Coolabah, near our river garden.
Some gilahs build in it every year, but nothing would induce the most
avaricious of black bird-collectors to get the young ones from there.

A wirreenun's boondoorr, or dillee bag, holds a queer collection:
several sizes of gooweeras, of both bone and wood, poison-stones,
bones, gubberahs (sacred stones), perhaps a dillee--the biggest, most
magical stone used for crystal-gazing, the spirit out of which is said
to go to the person of whom you want to hear, wherever he is, to see
what he is doing, and then show you the person in the crystal. A
dinahgurrerhlowah, or moolee, death-dealing stone, which is said to
knock a person insensible, or strike him dead as lightning would by an
instantaneous flash.

To these are added in this miscellaneous collection medicinal herbs,
nose-bones to put through the cartilage of his nose when going to a
strange camp, so that he will not smell strangers easily. The blacks
say the smell of white people makes them sick; we in our arrogance had
thought it the other way on.

Swansdown, shells, and woven strands of opossum's hair are valuable,
and guarded as such in the boondoorr, which is sometimes kept for
safety in the wirreenun's Minggah.

Having dealt with the supernatural part of a wirreenun's training,
which argues cunning in him and credulity in others, I must get to his
more natura