Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/181

Rh Chiloscyllium), which to this day bears the mark of Bia's spear-thrust.

Bia then walked on the water southward, on and on; he looked behind him at his old home Badu; he also caught a gapu (sucker fish), which he put in his basket. Then on and on again till he came to Waiben (Thursday Island) where he fished with the natives. They only caught an Itar, but Bia secured a gapu, and thus was able to catch a turtle. The same good fortune attended him at Muralug, which he next visited. At length he came to the mainland, and went up a river (? Jardine River); seeing a female turtle, he seized and had connection with her, and in due time she bore him a child. Bia became permanently affixed to the turtle, and still lives in a deep hole in the river.

Yawar of Badu was a famous gardener, and the yams and bananas grew rapidly in his garden, which was situated on the hill Gizö, on the windward side of the island.

The yams of the Madub men who lived at Samun grew only during the north-west season, whereas Yawar always had a good supply. So, one day, the Madub men sent a deputation of two of their number to discover the secret of Yawar's success. The two men said to Yawar, "How you make a garden? When you make him, he grow quick; when we make him, he take long time not till Kuki (the nor-west or rainy season) comes; best thing you learn us." "Very well," replied Yawar, "see you no forget; you Madub men put yam in ground, you see me, I make heap first, then I put yam in, now you savvy." And he showed them how he did it, until they understood it. The men returned home, but soon forgot what Yawar had told them; so that year their yams did not do well.

Next year a deputation of four men was sent to Yawar, and Yawar cut a flat stick and shovelled up the earth