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Banfield, E. J. (Edmund James), 1852-1923

"Confessions of a Beachcomber"

No blood or any of the juices of the meat have gone to
waste--the finest of meat extracts, the very quintessence of turtle,
remains. What would your gourmands give for a plate of this genuine
article? Who may say he has tasted turtle soup--pure and unadulterated--
unless he has "Kummaoried" his turtle to obtain it? With balls of grass
the blacks sop up the brown oily soup, loudly smacking and sucking
their lips to emphasise appreciation. Then there are the white flesh
and the glutin, the best of all fattening foods; and having eaten to
repletion for a couple of days, the diet palls, and they begin to speak
in shockingly disrespectful terms of turtle.
WEATHER DISTURBERS
In the arid parts of Australia, where rain rarely occurs, the blacks
have acquired much out-of-the-way knowledge on the means of obtaining
water. White men, unable to read the secret signs of its existence, have
perished in all the agonies of thirst in country in which water, from a
black fellow's point of view, was plentiful and comparatively easy to
reach. Here there is never any anxiety on the subject. The minds of the
blacks turn rather upon attempts to account for the rain, at times
excessive and discomforting.


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