not only the legends, but the names, that I might manage to spell them
so as to be understood when repeated. In particular I should like to
mention my indebtedness to Peter Hippi, king of the Noongahburrahs; and
to Hippitha, Matah, Barahgurrie, and Beemunny.

I have dedicated my booklet to Peter Hippi, in grateful recognition of
his long and faithful service to myself and my husband, which has
extended, with few intervals, over a period of twenty years. He, too,
is probably the last king of the Noongabburrahs, who are fast dying
out--, and soon their weapons, bartered by them for tobacco or whisky,
alone will prove that they ever existed. It seemed to me a pity that
some attempt should not be made to collect the folk-lore of the quickly
disappearing tribe--a folk-lore embodying, probably, the thoughts,
fancies, and beliefs of the genuine aboriginal race, and which, as
such, deserves to be, indeed, as Max Muller says, "might be and ought
to be, collected in every part of the world."

The legends were told to me by the blacks themselves, some of whom
remember the coming of Mitchellan, as they call Major Mitchell, the
explorer of these back creeks. The old blacks laugh now when they tell
you how frightened their mothers were of the first wheel tracks they
saw. They would not let the children tread on them, but carefully
lifted them over, lest their feet should break out in sores, as they
were supposed to do if they trod on a snake's track. But with all their
fear, little did they realise that the coming of Mitchellan was the
beginning of their end, or that fifty years afterwards, from the
remnant of their once numerous tribe, would be collected the legends
they told in those days to their piccaninnies round their camp-fires,
and those legends used to make a Christmas booklet for the children of
their white supplanters.