no want 'em? All right." No second offer was risked, and in a moment, in
one mouthful, the chick was being crunched by Mickie, feathers and all.
The menu of the Chinese--with its ducks' eggs salted, sharks' fins and
tails, stewed pups, fowls' and ducks' tongues, fricasseed cat, rat soup,
silkworm grubs, and odds and ends generally despised and rejected--is
pitifully unromantic when set against the generous omnivority of
Australian blacks.

A mile beyond Timana is Bedarra, with its lovely little bays and coves
and fantastically weathered rocks, its forest and jungle and scrub, and
its rocky satellite Pee-rahm-ah.

Several of the most conspicuous landmarks are associated in the minds of
blacks with legends, generally of the simplest and most prosaic nature.
About this rough rock Pee-rahm-ah is a story which in the minds of the
natives satisfactorily accounts for its presence.

In the far-away past two nice young gins, they say, were left by
themselves on Dunk Island, while the others of the tribe went away in
canoes to Hinchinbrook. Tiring of their lonesomeness, they made up their
minds to regain the company of their relatives by swimming from island to
island. Kumboola was easily reached; to Timana it is but a mile and a
half, and a mile thence to Bedarra. Leaving the most easterly point of
Bedarra, they were quickly caught in the swirl of a strong current and
spun about until both became dazed and exhausted. As they disappeared
beneath the water they were changed to stone, and the stone rose in
fantastic shape, and from that day Pee-rahm-ah has weathered all the
storms of the Pacific and formed a feature in the loveliest scene these
isles reveal.