top of it
leaves and feathers again, then a good layer of hot ashes, and over all
some earth.

The piggiebillahs were first smoked so that their quills might be
easily knocked off. This done, the insides were taken out, then the
piggiebillahs were put in little holes made beside the fire, and
covered over with hot ashes, as were also opossums, ducks and other
birds, iguanas and fish.

Ducks were plucked by our tribe, but in some places they were encased
thickly in mud, buried in the ashes to cook, and, when done, the
plaster of mud would be knocked off, and with it would come all the
feathers.

The insides of iguanas and fish are taken out all in one piece. Each
fish carries in its inside a representation of its Minggah--spirit
tree; by drying the inside and pressing it you can plainly see the
imprint of the tree.

When we go bathing, the blacks tell me that the holes in the creek
filled with gum leaves are codfish nests. They say too, that when they
beat the river to drive the fish out towards the net waiting for them,
that they hear the startled cod sing out.

Mussels and crayfish are cooked in the ashes.

The seagulls, which occasionally we used to see inland, are said to
have brought the first mussels to the back creeks.

Emu eggs the blacks roll in hot ashes, shake, roll again; shake once
more, and then bury them in the ashes, where they are left for about an
hour until they are baked hard, when they are eaten with much relish
and apparently no hurt to digestion, though one egg is by no means
considered enough for a meal in spite of its being equal to several
eggs of our domestic hen.

Not only are the blacks very particular in the way their game is carved
or divided, but also in the distribution of the portions allotted to
each person. The right to a particular part is an inherited one. No
polite offering of a choice to an honoured guest, no suggestion of the
leg or wing. You may loathe the leg of a bird as food, but at a black
fellow's feast, if convention ordains that as your portion, have it you
must; just as each rank in society had its invariable joint in early
mediaeval Ireland.

The seeds of Noongah--a sterculia--and Dheal, were ground on their flat
dayoorl-stones and made into cakes, which they baked, first on pieces
of bark beside the fire to harden them, then in the ashes. These
dayoorl, or grinding-stones, are handed down from generation to
generation, being kept each in the family to whom