Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/125

120 heads and fancied us more than a little given to stories of a Baron Munchausen character. This sceptical feeling is induced in a great measure, we imagine, by reason of the poetical licence which, as a rule, is generally indulged in by themselves, and they, knowing that they are highly endowed with the romancist furor, imagine that white men lack probity to an equal extent; therefore, it is that they take whatever we tell them of a wonderful nature, or in any way beyond aboriginal ken, with many grains of salt.

After having explained and discussed some such subject to them we have overheard them whilst seated round the fire at night talking the subjects over amongst themselves, and the fashion in which we, together with our elaborate theories were handled, was anything but flattering to our amour propre. Their powers of ridicule and their fine sense thereof are unmistakeably keen, and they use and enjoy them with infinite zest, and upon every favourable occasion which chance throws in their way.

They imagine the sun to be a large fire, kindled in the tyrrily (sky) by Nyoudenout daily, accounting for its origin in the following fashion:—

In the long past and forgotten times the only light which shone upon the world came from the moon and stars only. At that time there were not any aborigines on the earth, it being inhabited by beasts and birds alone.

One day during this semi-dark period an emu and a native companion quarrelled very violently, and the latter, whilst in the very height of his passion, threw one of the simple-minded emu's eggs up to the vast tyrrily, where it broke on a large pile of firewood, which Ngoudenout had seemingly