long time ago, a big man, “all a same debil-debil,” took out with his mighty fingers a plug of rock and put it “on top alonga Hinchinbrook.”  Now the particular decapitated pinnacle of Hinchinbrook is 20 miles away, and out of all proportion.  But these facts do not affect the legitimacy of the legend.  There is the hole, and there on the top of the far-away mountain the prodigious plug demonstrative evidence too obvious to be set aside on any such plea as the eternal fitness of things.  Is not the blue point of the mountain a defiantly triumphant fact?  Is not the legend authenticated by tradition and confirmed by topography?

Why, therefore, doubt it for a moment?

And the hole—­it goes a long, long way under the mountain.  It is a bad place, a very bad place.  No one has ever been there.  Suppose any fella go inside, bi’mby that fella sick, bi’mby that fella die.

Braving all the honest traditions, one fine day I took a lantern in the boat and induced the boys to row to the entrance of the cave.  Neither would venture in; indeed, they did all they could to dissuade me, protesting that evil was sure to befall.  A minute’s exploration showed that the cave did not extend 30 feet, and that it was dry, and resonant with “the whispering sound of the cool colonnade,” with no suggestion of unwholesomeness or weirdness.  But the blacks still pass it by.  The legend is as indestructible as the odour of attar of roses.  Although the boys persist in their account of the origin of the cave, it is known to them as “Coo-bee co-tan-you,” which signifies “that hole made by the meteor,” or, literally, “falling-star hole.”

Romance, too, follows the Hinchinbrook pinnacle.  Some local blacks regard it with awe, believing that it covers a deep hole in the mountain in which the winds and rain are pent up.  When a malignant “debil-debil” lifts the peak away the elements escape, roaring and hissing with anger and mischief.  When tired, they retire sulkily to the hole, which the “debil-debil” blocks with the monstrous rock.  Fine weather then prevails, and the rock, which has been hidden away among the mists by the fiend, becomes visible once more.

A SOULFUL DANCE

Of the many corrobborees that I have witnessed, the most novel in conception was performed on Dunk Island by blacks who came from the neighbourhood of Princess Charlotte Bay, some 200 miles to the north.

The imitation of the frolicsome skip and wing movements of the native companion is one of the typical dances of the aboriginals frequenting open plains where the great birds assemble.  In its performance the men—­decorated with streaks and daubs of white and pink clay, and wearing in their hair down and feathers—­form a circle, and bowing their bodies towards the centre, chuckle in undertones to the pianissimo tapping of boomerangs and the beating of resonant logs.  In strict time, to a crescendo accompaniment, the performers throw out their arms, extend their necks downward and upward, simultaneously utter squawks in imitation of the bird, and finally whirl about, flapping their arms, ceasing instantly by a common impulse.  The ballet is modelled in accordance with a study of Nature.