This is (Fig. 246) is a picture of Myndie as drawn by an Aboriginal, and it tallies with pictures made by men of other tribes:—
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FIG. 246.
All the evils that have ever afflicted the blacks of the southern and south-eastern tribes have come, they believe, from the north-north-west.
Kur-bo-roo.
The Native Bear, Kur-bo-roo, is the sage counsellor of the Aborigines in all their difficulties. When bent on a dangerous expedition, the men will seek help from this clumsy creature, but in what way his opinions are made known is nowhere recorded. He is revered, if not held sacred. The Aborigines may eat him, but they may not skin him as they skin the kangaroo and the opossum. A long time ago Kur-bo-roo stole all the
many years ago. He had committed some depredations on the flocks of the settlers. The news of his arrest was carried to near and far-off tribes—to tribes more than 200 miles from Melbourne. The men were greatly distressed. Telegraph fires were lighted, and night after night these could be seen in all directions. Messengers from seven tribes were sent to my blacks. My blacks importuned me day after day to liberate the black stranger. Finding that I would not liberate him, they urged me and all the settlers with whom they were friendly to leave the district and go to Van Dieman's Land or Sydney. Some hundreds of blacks of many different tribes were in Melbourne when the man of the tribe of Mun-nie Brum-brum was imprisoned, and they all fled, exhibiting the greatest terror, as they expected that the captive would move Pund-jel to let Myndie loose. Myndie they believed would spare no one. None of the people returned until the prisoner was set at large, which was some months after the first gathering and flight.—The late Wm. Thomas's MS.
Mr. E. S. Parker's pamphlet on the Aborigines of Australia contains a curious statement respecting the Myndie. He says:—"In the latter end of the year 1840, the Aborigines of all the neighbouring districts were in a fearful state of excitement in consequence of the forcible capture and temporary incarceration of some hundreds of their number by the military and police authorities. Two lives were sacrificed on the spot, and several sickly people subsequently died through the effects of the fright and excitement. On that occasion, several of the natives informed me confidentially that destruction was coming upon the white population, not even excepting those whom they knew to be their friends. It was known that they were practising secret incantations with this object. The effects were described graphically enough as producing dreadful sores, dysentery, blindness, and death. The Mindi was to come. I did not at the time regard the prediction as of much import. But, subsequently, ascertaining that the scars of the small-pox were termed lillipook Mindi, the scale of the Mindi, and the plague itself, which was to come in the dust, as monola Mindi, the dust of the Mindi, I was able to identify the threatened agent of destruction as the small-pox, of the ravages of which in former times there are traditions and traces among the natives of the interior. It is believed to be in the power of the large serpent Mindi, the supposed incarnation of the destroying spirit, to send this plague forth in answer to the appeals and incantations of those who seek the destruction of their foes."
