thick soup.  No blood or any of the juices of the meat have gone to waste—­the finest of meat extracts, the very quintessence of turtle, remains.  What would your gourmands give for a plate of this genuine article?  Who may say he has tasted turtle soup—­pure and unadulterated—­ unless he has “Kummaoried” his turtle to obtain it?  With balls of grass the blacks sop up the brown oily soup, loudly smacking and sucking their lips to emphasise appreciation.  Then there are the white flesh and the glutin, the best of all fattening foods; and having eaten to repletion for a couple of days, the diet palls, and they begin to speak in shockingly disrespectful terms of turtle.

WEATHER DISTURBERS

In the arid parts of Australia, where rain rarely occurs, the blacks have acquired much out-of-the-way knowledge on the means of obtaining water.  White men, unable to read the secret signs of its existence, have perished in all the agonies of thirst in country in which water, from a black fellow’s point of view, was plentiful and comparatively easy to reach.  Here there is never any anxiety on the subject.  The minds of the blacks turn rather upon attempts to account for the rain, at times excessive and discomforting.  Bad weather, in common with other untoward circumstances, is frequently ascribed to the machinations of evilly disposed boys.  A boy may accept the credit or have the greatness thrust upon him of the manufacture of a gale which has brought about general discomfort, and to spite him, regardless of consequence to others, another boy will promise a still more destructive breeze next year.  And so the game of wanton interference with the meteorological conditions of the continent proceeds, each successive infliction being arranged to serve out the author of the one preceding.  It may be that the instigator of a gale lives far away, at the Palm Islands, or on Hinchinbrook, or at Mourilyan.  Those who are terrified or inconvenienced agree to ascribe it to him, and having done so there is nothing of the mysterious to explain away.  Usually the boy upon whom the responsibility is fixed is not available for cross-examination; but that renders the fact all the more conclusive.  Here is the storm.  Peter of the Palms must have made it.

An old gin known as Kitty, and who lived on Hinchinbrook Island, was famed on account of her successful manipulation of the weather.  She was a grim personage—­held in respect, if not awe, because of the peculiar distinctions ascribed to her.  She could command not only the wind and the rain, but the thunder and lightning also, and to offend her was to run the risk of bringing about a terrifying storm.  Years after her death blacks had faith in her potency for ill.  One of the few white men who have attempted to climb the highest peaks of the island mountain, informed me that when he reached a certain elevation, the boys who accompanied him never spoke above an awe-struck