with a stroke of his wing knocked the brand far over the stream into the long dry grass of the opposite bank, which immediately ignited, and the flames spread over the face of the country. The black man then felt the fire, and said it was good."
Mr. Meyer states that the Aborigines of Encounter Bay were once, according to their own account, without fire. Their ancestors, they relate, were a long time ago assembled at Mootabaringar, and having no fire, they were compelled to perform their dances in the day-time. They sent messengers—Kuratje and Kanmari (fabulous beings, who subsequently became fishes)—towards the east, to Kondole, to invite him to the feast, as they knew that he possessed fire. Kondole, who was a large, powerful man, came, but hid his fire, on account of which alone he had been invited. The men, displeased at this, determined to obtain the fire by force; but no one ventured to approach him. At length one named Riballe determined to wound him with a spear, and then take the fire from him. He threw the spear, and wounded him in the neck. This caused a great laughing and shouting, and nearly all were transformed into different animals. Kondole ran to the sea, and became a whale, and ever after blew water out of the wound which he had received in his neck. Kuratje and Kanmari became small fish. The latter was dressed in a good kangaroo skin, and the former in a mat only, made of sea-weed, which is the reason, they say, that the Kanmari contains a good deal of oil under the skin, while the Kuratje is dry and without fat. Others became opossums, and went upon trees. The young men who were ornamented with tufts of feathers became cockatoos, the tuft of feathers being the crest. Rilballe took Kondole's fire and placed it in the grass-tree, where it still remains, and can be brought out by rubbing.
The following Legend of the Origin of Fire and of the Apotheosis of Two Heroes, by the Aborigines of Tasmania, as related bg a native of the Oyster Bay Tribe, is extracted from a paper by Joseph Milligan, Esq., F.L.S., in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania:—
"My father, my grandfather, all of them lived a long time ago all over the country; they had no fire. Two blackfellows came; they slept at the foot of a hill—a hill in my own country. On the summit of a hill they were seen by my fathers, my countrymen—on the top of the hill they were seen standing; they threw fire like a star—it fell amongst the black men, my countrymen. They were frightened; they fled away, all of them; after a while they returned; they hastened and made a fire—a fire with wood; no more was fire lost in our land. The two blackfellows are in the clouds; in the clear nights you see them like two stars.[1] These are they who brought fire to my fathers.
The two black men stayed awhile in the land of my fathers. Two women (Lowanna) were bathing; it was near a rocky shore, where mussels were plentiful. The women were sulky, they were sad; their husbands were faithless, they had gone with two girls. The women were lonely; they were swimming in the water, they were diving for cray-fish. A sting-ray lay concealed
- ↑ Castor and Pollux.
