At first, quietly they smoked the pipe of fellowship, of long years of understanding.

Presently the old sergeant said, “Bungaree, are you allowed now to speak the name of that dead old warrior chief of your tribe, that one that was buried by the carved box tree stump?”

Bungaree was sitting down by the sergeant’s feet. Slowly he arose, took the pipe from his mouth, turned to face the west. He stood silently for a while, then turned to the sergeant.

“I can tell you here, sarjun, now. That old warrior chief of the Namoi River tribe was name of Red Kangaroo the Red Chief!”

“Now why, Bungaree,” said the sergeant gently, “why couldn’t you tell his name to Dr Hayne that day years ago when he asked you?”

Bungaree’s old form straightened, a gleam came to his eyes.

“Because,” he answered defiantly, “we stood upon my tribal burying ground. No one of my tribe must ever speak aloud the name of the dead when standing upon the tribal burying ground, because the ghost of the dead is called back to the burying ground. Then someone in the tribe must die, to allow the ghost to go away again. In my tribe anyone was killed quick, no matter who he was, if two of the tribe heard him speak the name of the dead on the tribe’s burying ground!”

“I see,” said the sergeant slowly.

“Yes. That why I no tell Dr Hayne name of old warrior chief. But Dr Hayne no understand. He get more angry. He tell me to go! Then he do very bad thing—he get Mr Ashby to dig grave of one of my tribe when I still on my tribal burying ground!”

“I see,” said the sergeant. And there was silence for a while.

“Bungaree,” asked the sergeant quietly, “did you ever hear of any great deeds, of raids or battles, in which that Red Chief led your Namoi River tribe?”

“Ah, yes!” breathed Bungaree, and he seemed to have grown in stature. “In every tribe there are men trained to remember. And so my father trained me!”

And thus Bungaree, with feelings and memory unleashed, started on his long, continuous story, a goodly feat of memory. As much of it as I could have used, almost just as Sergeant Ewing’s son years ago wrote it down from the mouth of old Bungaree.

With but slight deviations to help make the story more plain every here and there, this book is, in the main, practically word for word as handed down by the legend-memory of the Gunn-e-darr-tribe. I have had help from a little book, Kamilaroi and Other Australian Languages, by the Rev. William Ridley, M.A., published in Sydney in 1875.

Ridley, way back in the eighteen-fifties, was working among the then numerous aboriginal tribes along the Namoi, Barwon, and other New South Wales rivers. Later he worked over the Liverpool Plains, along the Barwon, Darling, Macintyre, Moonie, Condamine, and Bundarra. In 1871 he again visited the Barwon and Namoi on behalf of the Government to obtain further in formation of the Kamilaroi tribes, their languages, traditions, songs, habits and manners, institutions and laws.