THEIR TRADITIONS.—THE CREATION.
In the beginning, say the Dieyerie, the Mooramoora (Good Spirit) made a number of small black lizards (these are still to be met with under dry bark), and being pleased with them he promised they should have power over all other creeping things. The Mooramoora then divided their feet into toes and fingers, and placing his forefinger on the centre of the face created a nose, and so in like manner afterwards eyes, mouth, and ears. The spirit then placed one of them in a standing position, which it could not, however, retain, whereupon the Deity cut off the tail, and the lizard walked erect. They were then made male and female, so as to perpetuate the race, and leave a tribe to dispute their ancestry with Darwin's monkeys.
Men, women, or children do not vary in the slightest degree in this account of their creation.
CREATION OF THE SUN.
Their traditions suppose that man and all other beings were created by the moon, at the bidding of the Mooramoora. Finding the emu pleasant to the sight, and judging it to be eatable (but unable, owing to its swiftness, to catch it during the cold that then prevailed), the Mooramoora was appealed to to cast some heat on the earth so as to enable them to run down the desired bird. The Mooramoora, complying with their request, bade them perform certain ceremonies (yet observed, but too obscene to be described), and then created the sun.
MURDOO—(Subdivision of Tribe into Families.)
Murdoo means taste, but in its primary and larger signification implies family, founded on the following tradition.
After the creation, as previously related, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and others of the closest kin intermarried promiscuously, until the evil effects of these alliances becoming manifest, a council of the chiefs was assembled to consider in what way they might be averted, the result of their deliberations being a petition to the Mooramoora, in answer to which he ordered that
