Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/459

VIII to himself the Mura-mura Ankuritcha and all those who were with him. Another legend of the Dieri and Tirari accounts for the fossil remains found at Lake Eyre, and called by them Kadimarkara, as having been creatures which, in the old times of the Mura-muras, climbed down from the sky to the earth by the huge Eucalyptus trees on which it rested, and which grew on the western side of Lake Eyre. The Wotjobaluk had a legend of a pine-tree, which extended up through the sky (Wurra-wurra) to the place beyond which is the abode of Mamen-gorak. The people of that time ascended by this tree to gather manna, which implies that trees grew there like the Eucalypt, which in the Wotjobaluk country shed the so-called manna. The Wurunjerri also had a sky country, which they called Tharangalk-bek, the gum-tree country. It was described to me as a land where there were trees. The tribal legends also tell of it as the place to which Bunjil ascended with all his people in a whirlwind. By the Kurnai this place is called Blinte-da-nurk, or (freely translated) "bright sky of the cloud," also Bring a-nurt, or "bone of the cloud." The Ngarigo called the sky Kulumbi, and said that on the other side of it there is another country with trees and rivers. This belief was also that of the Theddora and Wolgal.

When one comes to consider it, one should not feel surprised that the Australian savage thinks that the earth is a flat limited surface, and the sky a hard vault over it. I have been struck by this appearance myself when in the vast extents of the open treeless country in the interior of Australia, especially on clear starlight nights. To the savage the area of his tribal country is so vast as compared to the individual, that the idea of anything other than a flat earth could not suggest itself to him. We ourselves are so accustomed to speak of the sun "rising" and "setting," that we almost mentally disregard the fact of the earth's rotation, nor does our position as to the earth itself appear other