The first of those that they made was at Yantabulla, which bears their name to this day.
The blacks were delighted at having watering-places which neither a drought nor the fiercest sun could dry up. The Yantas were not contented with this nor with the other springs they made. They determined to excavate a whole plain, and turn it into a lake so deep that the sun could never dry it, and which would be full of fish for the tribes.
They went to Kinggle and there began their work. On they toiled unceasingly, but work as they would they could not complete their scheme, for one after another wearied and died, until at last nothing was left on the plain but the mud springs under the surface and the graves of the Yantas on top. No blacks will cross Kinggle plains lest some of these spirits arise through the openings of their graves.
This legend shows what a disheartening country the West is in a drought. When even the spirits gave in, how can ordinary men succeed? But indeed it is not ordinary men who do, but our 'Western heroes,' as Will Ogilvie calls them, who wear their cross of bronze on neck and cheek in the country where 'the green fades into grey.'
CHAPTER XII
THE TRAPPING OF GAME
Some of the blacks' methods of catching game I have seen practised, some have long since died out of use.
Of course the sportsmen knew the favourite watering-holes of the game. At such a place they made a rough break at each side, leaving an opening where the track was. Along this track they would lay a net with one end on the edge of the water; in the water they put sticks on the ends of which the birds rest to drink, the other ends are out in the trap. They would make a hole low down on each side of the net, and a man would hide in each.
A bird's watering-place, where the blacks trap them, is called Dheelgoolee. When the Dheelgoolee trapping begins, on the first day those who go out hunting must bring home their game alive to give the man at the Dheelgoolee luck. Then they never try to catch an emu or kangaroo, only iguana, opossum, piggiebillah, paddy melon, or bandicoot, all of which could be brought home alive. But after the first day they can kill as they go along.