iggiebillah relax his grip and be taken captive without any trouble.
The piggiebillahs burrow into the sand and leave their young there as
soon as the faintest feel of a spine appears. The baby piggiebillahs
look like little indiarubber toys.

The opossums all disappeared from our district. When we were first
there they were very numerous and used to make raids at night to my
rose-bushes--great havoc the result. It is said a very great
wirreenun--wizard--willed them away so that his enemy, whose yunbeai, or
personal totem, the opossum was, should die. This design was frustrated
by counter magic; two powerful wizards appeared and, acting in concert,
put a new yunbeai into the dying man; he recovered.

When the opossums were about the blacks used to see their scratched
tracks on the trees, and chop or burn them out. They miss the opossums
very much, for not only were they a prized food, but their skins made
rugs, their hair was woven into cords of which were made amulets worn
on the forearm or head against sickness, and with no modern instrument
can they so well carve their weapons, as with an opossum tooth.
Naturally their desire is to see Moodai, the opossum, return; to that
end a wirreenun is now singing incantations to charm him back.

Opossum hunters had a way of bringing them home strung round their
necks; very disagreeable, I should think, but custom, that tyrant,
rules it so. The old gins dug out yams vigorously; some were eaten raw,
others were kept for cooking.

To cook them they dug out a hole, made a fire in it, put some stones on
the fire, then, when the stones were heated and the fire burnt down,
they laid some leaves and grass on the stones, sprinkled some water,
then put on the yams, on top of them more grass, sprinkled more water,
then more grass and a. thick coating of earth, leaving the yams to
cook.

Several other roots they cooked and ate. Raw they ate thistle tops,
pigweed, and crowfoot, with great relish. Their game they cooked as
follows. Kangaroo were first singed, cleaned out, and filled with hot
stones, then put on the top of a burnt-down fire, hot ashes heaped all
over them. The blacks like their meats with the gravy in, very
distinctly red gravy. Emu were plucked, the insides taken out, and the
birds filled up with hot stones, box leaves, and some of their own
feathers. A fire was made in a hole; when it was burnt down, leaves and
emu feathers were put in it, on top of these the bird, on