THE BLOODY SKIRT OF SETTLEMENT.
“I had always heard the Indian (North American) spoken of as a
revengeful, bloodthirsty man. To find him a man capable of feelings
and affections, with a heart open to the wants and responsive to
the ties of social life, was amazing.”—_From the Memoirs of Henry
R. Schoolcraft, the hero-explorer of “Garden of the West” fame._
For the purposes of our narrative we must turn back in our portfolio
of Australian reminiscences, and present to our readers a sketch of
an event that took place sixteen years previous to the date of the
commencement of our story.
An August evening is sealing up in long red rows of clouds another
day of the year of 1873. The scene before us is the heart of the
weird “Never, Never Land,” so called by the earliest pioneers from
the small chance they anticipated, on reaching it, of ever being
able to return to southern civilization. Eight hundred miles in a
direct line nor’-north-west from Sydney on the sea-board, and over
fifteen hundred miles by the dreary ways a traveller must follow, the
sand-hills, clay-paws, and low sandstone prominences of the district,
now called the country of the Upper Mulligan, was still a _terra
incognita_ to Europeans on the aforementioned evening. It is true
those ill-fated heroes, Burke and Wills, had passed through it twelve
years before; but, poor fellows, they were hurrying southwards for
the relief that came too late, and had no time to take much notice of
the country. Night is coming on, with that gloamingless presumption
that is mentioned as one of the oddities of the new land by most new
chum visitors to tropic Australia, in their epistolary offerings
to friends in the old country. The crimson clouds just above the
horizon flash out brighter than before, as the sun sinks its lower
edge behind the dim grey-blue line of dreary sand-hills. The earth
grows darker suddenly, and the bosom of the piece of water in the
foreground, is led and fringed with graceful lignum bushes, and
backed by a picturesque outline of broken sandstone cliffs, becomes
lighter by contrast as all else merges into purple shadows. Native
companions (a large kind of crane) croak hoarsely high overhead,
as they follow the sun westward, across the violet expanse of sky,
to their feeding grounds by the salt lakes; large buzzards, called
turkeys by the Australian settlers, come out to wrangle over grubs by
the water’s side; mosquitoes rise in shrill-voiced, murmuring clouds
to address the night-feeding fauna of the locality, _vice_ swarms
of persistent house-flies retired, the latter having now festooned
themselves in countless myriads upon the zigzag branches of the Gidea
scrub around; dingoes are slinking by, like the guilty shadows of
departed thieves, to the dark, slippery mud-pools, where the overflow
of the water-hole (a small lake left in an intermittent river’s bed)
has formed a broken, snake-haunted swamp; and all the life of the
half-desert country around this part of the Parapee (now Mulligan)
river gathers to enjoy the moisture, the comparative coolness, and
the food-producing qualities of this Australian oasis.
Westward across the dreary salt pans, were we to follow the pelicans
and native companions in their evening flight, we should find
bitter lakes, with dazzling fringes of snowy salt, and strange—and,
according to native legend, Cunmarie-haunted—mound springs. There,
also, in the neighbourhood of the rocky Gnallan-a-gea Creek and
sand-locked Eta-booka, we may find the wondrous Pitchurie plant (of
the poisonous order of _Solanacea_). Growing here, and nowhere else
in Australia (at the time we write of), the location of this valuable
native drug, with its lanceolate leaves and white flowers,—that fires
the warrior, soothes the sufferer, and inspires the orator,—was
shrouded by the cunning protectionist inhabitants of the wilds with
the grimiest, most mysterious surroundings their medicine men could
possibly invent. Black boiling lakes, Cerberus-like _portiers_, half
man, half emu, and devils of the most uncivil type were supposed by
the natives of other districts to guard this sole source of revenue,
in the shape of boomerangs and red ochre, of the Paree and Mudlow
country.
Eastward a matter of twenty miles from the water-hole are the
castellated “spires and steeples” of a long range of flint-crowned
sandstone hills, whose _débris_ has covered the intervening country
with an almost unbroken “dressing” of glaring yellow and red brown
stones, or “gibbers.” If we were to follow the river bed southwards
we should come upon magnificently grassed flats, now covered with the
shorthorns of various squatter-kings.
On the sandy summit of a mass of brittle, broken sandstone,
overlooking the water-hole, is the chief camp of the aboriginal
inhabitants of the district. The father of this little hamlet—if we
can honour the collection of beehive-like, mud-coiffured _gunyahs_
by that name—belongs to the strong class-family, or _totem_,
of the _Mourkou_ (ignana-lizards); and, food being plentiful,
enemies scarce, and no death-avenging troubles on hand, the little
community is happy and contented on this winter evening, as the sun
goes down. The smoke from the camp-fires curls up fearlessly from
the tree-studded flat below the village, setting the More-Porks
(night-jars of Australasia) coughing in the branches; and the
peaceful though monotonous chants of infant-suckling mothers come
with a soft lullaby murmur upon the ear. There is something very
soothing about these native _Yika-wimma_ (literally, milk songs),
although we have heard them facetiously likened to the buzz of a
meat-tin-imprisoned blow-fly; but, anyhow, their effect on a quiet
evening like this is perfectly in sympathy with the spirit of the
surroundings. Presently some twenty male natives, naked almost as the
day they were born, collect round one of the fires, and proceed to
discuss the merits of sundry lizards, fish, and bandicoot which have
been roasted on the embers. The _menu_ also includes two varieties
of potato-like roots,—_Kylabra_, a rather rare climbing plant, and
that yellow-flowered “praty” of the interior, _Tintina_. The women
sit patiently waiting for their turn to come, each watching her
particular lord, much as a brown-eyed collie does his master, but
scarcely ever ceasing their droning song. Now and then their patience
is rewarded by a morsel being flung to them; and by-and-by, at a few
words from the village-father—there is no real chief in these truly
socialistic circles—the men gather round him to hold a consultation
of some importance, the “ladies” immediately proceeding to do
justice to what remains of the dinner. The men now gathered round
the white-haired old native are mostly athletic-looking fellows,
whose dark, naked skins, freshly polished with the fragrant fat—to an
aboriginal’s olfactory ideas—of the ignana, shine in the firelight
like the dark oaken carvings of saints in an Antwerp cathedral during
midnight mass. The younger men and the boys (_derrière_), who keep
at a respectful distance, and have eaten their meal apart from the
fully-initiated males, are far from bad-looking as a rule. Ceaseless
fun and joking, with occasional tale-telling, is going on amongst
the youths; and presently they skip off into the shadows of the
_wurleys_ (huts) on the hill, where one of their number tells the
oft-repeated native yarn of the “Crow and the Parula Pigeon,” amidst
the shrieks of laughter of his delighted audience as they open their
white-ivoried jaws in merriment at his imitations of the car-car,
car-car, of the feathered rascal of the story.
The middle-aged men have the usual distinctive characteristics
of all Australian aborigines,—the slightly-made, calfless leg;
the brilliantly-expressive yet bloodshot eyes; the short, flat,
“tip-tilted” nose and strongly emphasized corrugator muscles of the
forehead. They wear their hair generally in a matted collection
of wiry curls, cut so as to fall round their heads in the modern
high-art fashion; but some, having need of materials for fishing-net
and line making, are cultivating their locks into cone-shaped
elevations, by means of bands of grass. All of them stalk, rather
than walk, as they move about, with long, from-the-hip strides that
remind one of Harry Furniss’ caricatures of Irving. And what is
particularly noticeable is, that the hunted-thief look one nearly
always sees on the face of the average “station boy” (squatter’s
aboriginal servant) is absent.
“What does the father of my mother’s sister, Pirruup, the clever
sandpiper, think of these warnings, of these warnings?” chants one
of the men, addressing the grey-haired patriarch, who sits a little
apart from the rest, all being now squatting on their hams around the
fire. “Shall Deder-re-re, of the duck-haunted Bindiacka water-hole,
tell us once more of the strangers he saw, so that all may hear?”
Only two of the men have yet heard the important news brought by
their red-ochre trader on his return home an hour before, so with
the eagerness of children they wait open-eyed for the sage’s answer.
Gazing heavenwards, where the stars are fast appearing at their
brightest, the old man sits blinking his cunning old whiteless eyes,
without apparently having heard the question. Upon his shrivelled,
old, monkey-like features, lit by the fitful, dancing glare of
the flames, nature has written a long history of privations, of
weary trackings and watchings, and of savage battles. Yet there is
something decidedly picturesque about him, and even admirable; for
there is a certain air of dignity, command, and superior knowledge
that makes itself manifest in all his movements.
After a somewhat lengthy silence, broken only by the laughter of the
boys, and the distant, musical howling of far-off dingoes, the old
man turns his head towards a young man, wearing the _Yootchoo_, or
“string of barter,” and murmurs, “_Yathamarow_” (you may speak).
All the men present are busy plaiting hair, scraping the thigh-bones
of emus for dagger-making, and the like; but they cease their work as
their trader, who has the distinctive red-ochre marks upon his body
that show his profession, begins to speak.
“Three are the moons that have broken, as the _Nerre_ (lake-shells)
break upon the wave-beaten shore, since I departed for the land of
the Dieyerie, for the land of the Yarrawaurka. The sun is hot. The
birds fly only in the shade. After two days water is needed by the
man who carries a weight.” The speaker proceeds, in a roundabout
way, to notify to his hearers that, partly through want of water and
partly by fear, he had not cared to follow up a certain discovery he
had made,—of approaching strangers.
“They travelled slowly,” he continued, gesticulating, and glancing
round as his growing excitement fired the faces of his audience with
reflected interest.
“Their heads were ornamented with the white _moongarwooroo_ of
mourning, but worn differently to ours. Their skin is covered with
hair like the Thulka (native rodent), and they carry the fire-sticks
of the southern people in their hands. Their women are large as
sand-hills, and bent double with the weight of their loading,—their
black hair sweeping the sand, and their resemblance to emus in the
distance being great.”
We are bound to pause again, to explain that the natives of the
interior have often told us they mistook the first-comers’ horses for
their women, as they carried the packs, the females of a native party
on the march always taking the part of porters. This will explain the
ochre trader’s error.
A general conversation follows for a time, when the red-marked native
cries,—
“Listen! I have learned a new Wonka (song).” Then commencing to mark
time with his nodding head, and tapping an accompaniment with two
carved boomerangs, he commences to chant the following verse:—
“POORAMANA, oh poor fellows,
ORO TORA TONA, cooking,
In the embers savoury morsels,
Came the strangers, PLUKMAN HOLO
BUM, BUM.”
An impromptu chorus here came in from all the men present of—
“PARAMANA, oh poor fellows,
BUM, BUM.”
With the ready appreciation of Australian aboriginals, all those
present took in immediately the significance of the above words,
and saw in them the singer’s wish to warn his brethren that the
approaching strangers were of the same kind as those mentioned in
his song. As, however, the difficulty of true translation and the
obscureness of the meaning may puzzle our white readers and prevent
them culling the poet’s idea, we will explain that the trader had,
in these terse lines, pictured how some poor black fellows, having
obtained some savoury morsels, were cooking the same over the fire,
when the dreaded strangers surrounded and destroyed them by means of
smoke-emitting fire-sticks, that made a great noise, the imitation of
which formed the chorus of the song “Bum, Bum.”
There is a cessation of the song, and a feeling of insecurity saddens
each face, for it is only before whites, and the natives of other
and possibly hostile districts, that the stolid, expressionless
physiognomy, sometimes mentioned as characteristic of the American
Indian, is seen in Australian aborigines.
The old man has taken a plug of a tobacco-like compound from behind
his ear and is chewing it, growing excited meanwhile. He is seeking
for inspiration from a sort of hasheesh, formed of the dried and
powdered leaves of the Pitchurie mixed with the ashes of the Montera
plant.
The author of the didactic dialogues of Thebes, the old world
expounder of some of the theories of modern psychology, if he could
revisit the earth and wend his way to Central Australia, would there
find some of his ideas, or rather the ghostly semblance of them,
passable as religious coinage amongst the old men of the tribes.
Grand old Cebes taught that man had a sort of life of apprenticeship
before he entered upon this world’s stage, and could (if pure of
heart) sometimes take counsel in times of perplexity by looking
backward into his sinless anterior existence.
One of the virtues that the native drug Pitchurie is supposed to
possess when used by the old men is the opening up of this past life,
giving them the power and perquisites of seers.
To return to the old man and the camp. All the men watch him, waiting
for him to speak. The boys, meanwhile, having tired of story-telling,
are playing at Beringaroo over a large fire they have started. This
game is performed with boat-like toys formed out of the leaf of the
Aluja, warmed and pinched into shape. Flung upwards with a sharp
twirl, imparted to it with the first and second fingers, concave
side downwards, over the blazing fire, the plaything mounts with
the draft, spinning rapidly, till it meets the cooler air, when it
descends, only to mount again, still whirling in hawk-like circles.
Shouts of applause reward the player whose toy keeps longest on the
wing.
“Let the big fire be extinguished!” comes the word of command from
the old man, uttered in a low voice. Then the speaker rises, and
stretching out his arms towards the west, with the saliva caused by
the chewing process running from his mouth upon his white beard and
tawny chest, he commences to speak. The boys’ fire has been quickly
subdued, and men, women, and children watch the figure of their
“guide, philosopher, and friend.”
Slowly, at first, come the words; the old man’s voice growing louder
and more excited towards the end of his speech, which is a kind of
address to his patron-, or birth-star, in this case that of the
Evening, or Lizard’s eye:—
“_Amathooroocooroo_, Star of approaching night, _Kow-wah_, thou
risest, _dilchiewurruna_, from the sun’s camping-place.
“_Boonkunana boolo_, Thy shining head ornamented with gypsum,
“Is slowly ascending o’er _Waieri_, the sand-hills.
“_Aumin thieamow_, Remain and tell us, _Purrurie_, what see you,
_Ooyellala_, beneath you?
“The red-ochre hunters, _Wolkapurrie_.
“The braves who have carried _Murulyie_, the red-ochre, hither,
_Wilchrena_, are fearsome!”
Here the men and women burst in with a chorus of one word, dwelling
on the last two syllables:—
“_Muracherpū-nā_, We are groping in the dark.”
The old singer continues:—
“Quiet is _wathararkuna_, the south wind; but _gna-pou kouta_,
“The noise of the waters reaches us.
“The _ko-ning-chteri_, the noisy gnats,
“_Chaudachanduna kuriunia_, are whispering over the spinifax (spiny
grass).”
Chorus: “_Muracherpū-nā._”
“Thou dancest as _kintallo_, the shrimp,
“As o’er _Kuldrie_, the salt-lake, thou risest.
“_Kouta_, the waves, _koolkamuna_, dance round you,
“_Apoouna, Apoouna_, bathing thy face.
“_Murieami mungarina_, farewell, thou silent one!
“_Mungamarow mungara_, let my soul speak!”
Chorus: “_Mungamarow mungara!_”
As the last vibrations of the chorus die away, the aged vocalist
suddenly turns, and, filled with the spirit of prophecy, cries aloud
in a different tone of voice, “The strangers are coming,” and then
proceeds to march rapidly up and down beneath the _Walke_ trees,
his limbs quivering with excitement, and his staring eyeballs almost
flashing with the wild madness of intoxication.
“I hear them crush the _Yedede_ with their feet,” he howls. “No more
shall our women gather the food-seed of _Warrangaba_.” Then stopping,
and raising his arms, he continues in a lower tone: “High above my
head soars the hawk _Kerrek-i_, laughing as he smells the slaughter.”
Then mournfully, as he goes on with his promenade: “No more shall
the emu seek the _Nunyakaroo_ for its young ones. Both the _Yeraga_
and _Galga_, will disappear from the land. What does _Tounka_, the
crayfish, whisper in the waters of _Palieu_? Why does _Mol-la_, the
crab, cry _Kow-wah_! come here! _Kow-wah!_ come hither?”
The old man goes on marching and gesticulating, as he continues his
prophetic lament; and the frightened boys, huddling together near the
women, have ceased to laugh, and can hardly breathe with terror. The
mothers hug their fat little offspring closer to their breasts, and
dismay is pictured on all faces save that of the travelled bearer of
the dreadful news. He had already owned to feeling timid, when two
days since he found himself alone in the proximity of the dreaded
white-faced devils from the south, of whose cruelty and far-reaching
lightnings he had heard account on his travels. But he is with his
friends and brethren now, he thinks, and besides, the new-comers
will not arrive at the village yet awhile, perhaps not at all. The
white-faced ones were not always victorious either; he had heard of
a party of them, who had been on a slave-making expedition, being
attacked, and their prisoners rescued, at Congabulla Creek, to the
south-east. To-morrow the signal fires could be lighted, and the
whole tribe collected for a grand consultation upon the subject of
the invaders. Three hundred braves could surely defy the handful of
approaching _Purdie_ (locusts). The _Pulara_ (women who collect the
braves and hunters together) should start at day break. Just as the
thinker’s meditations gave birth to a more hopeful view of things,
the old prophet of evil ends his harangue from sheer exhaustion, and
sinks theatrically upon the sandy soil, lying there motionless in a
state of coma.
Nearly every emergency produces its hero. Stepping forward into the
open space before the other natives, bold-hearted Deder-re-re, of
the red stripes, expresses aloud his hopes and plans, and winds up
with a kind of nasal chant, that only a few of his audience—wonderful
linguists as most of them are—can understand, as it is of southern
origin, and in the language of the Warangesda tribe of New South
Wales. The words have, as in most native songs, a hidden meaning,—a
_double entendre_,—and in this case they are intended to illustrate
the fact that a tribe is safest when its members are collected, or
“rolled together,” much after the manner of the fable of the bundle
of sticks. The song sung and explained has a visibly cheering effect
upon all. At the risk of being tiresome, we place the words before
our readers, with a fair translation of it, as another example of
Australian aboriginal poetry:—
“_Chūul’yu Will’ynu,
Wallaa gnorææ_
_Chillæ binuæ aa gna,
Kinūnæa gnūuraæ jeeaa
Chiæba-a gnūtata._”
Chorus: “_Kirrægirræ, kirrægirræ Leeaa gna._”
TRANSLATION.
“The porcupine has fiery spikes,
Burning like the fire-stick,
Surely some one is pinching me,
Softly, as a sister pinches her brother,
But I am safe, safe beyond danger
Grinning, grinning, grinning, are my teeth.”
The men now begin to discuss the matter in hand in a low voice, the
old patriarch still lying upon the ground meanwhile; and a strange,
wild group they form in the firelight, as they squat round in various
attitudes. The women and boys now retire to the hut-crowned hill
above the river flat. The heavenly peacefulness of the night scene,
with the star-spangled sheet of water lying silent in its dark fringe
of verdure; the purple dome above, pierced with the golden eyes of
native deities; and the tremulous cries of various night-prowling
birds and beasts, softened and sweetened by distance,—all seems in
curious contrast to the anxious faces of the little community.
A woman wearing the _Bilpa_ forehead ornament of kangaroo teeth is
sitting at the door of one of the gunyahs on the hill, with a child
in her arms. The hut, which is exactly like all the others in the
group,—and for the matter of that all within two or three hundred
miles,—is built of sticks, which have been stuck into the ground at
the radius of a common centre, and then bent over so as to form an
egg-shaped cage, which is substantially thatched on top and sides
with herbage and mud. The door, on opening, faces the least windy
quarter, namely, the north. Reclining against the portal is the
satin-skinned native mother, who, dark as night, has the beautiful
eyes, teeth, and hair of her race. She is gazing at the fat little
man-animal on her lap by the light of an anti-mosquito fire-stick
which she gracefully holds above her, and the group would form as
beautiful a model as any artist could wish for to illustrate that
affectionate adoration for their offspring which is the pleasing
attribute of most mothers, civilized or uncivilized, all over the
world. A slenderly formed boy, of about eight years of age, kneels by
her side, amusing his baby brother with a toy boomerang that he has
that day won as a prize, in the throwing game of _Wuæ Whuuitch_, with
his fellows. The woman is singing the chorus of the chant with which
the villagers have that day welcomed the returning ochre trader, her
husband:—
“_Mulka-a-a-a-wora-a-a,
Yoong-arra-a-a Oondoo-o-o
Ya Pillie-e-e-e Mulka-a-a-a
Angienie,
Kooriekirra-a-a ya-a-aya._”
TRANSLATION.
“Put colour in the bags,
Close it all round,
And make the netted bag
All the colours of the rainbow.”
But leaving the peaceful village for a time, let us turn our mental
night-glass towards a point four miles down the river’s course. Here
the stream, having left the rocky, sandstone country, rushes its
spasmodically flowing waters, from time to time, between banks of
alluvial mud. A rank growth of various herbs, rushes, and fair-sized
gum-trees has arisen here from the rich soil, whose fertile juices
are more often replenished by the river than that farther afield.
It is very dark below the branches; but if the meagre starlight
could struggle in sufficient quantity between the pointed leaves, we
should be able to see upon the water’s brim a strange mark in these
solitudes, the footprint of a horse’s hoof,—the first of its kind
that has ever refreshed its parched and grateful throat in the little
billabong before us.
The ochre-hunter was in error when he calculated the speed at which
the strangers were approaching his village. He had seen only the
pack-train, which was proceeding leisurely to Palieu water-hole. The
invaders were squatter-explorers pushing northwards in the van of
that great red wave of European enterprise that, set in motion by the
land fever of the “Seventies,” burst with a cruel and unbridled rush
over the native lands lying north of the Cooper and Diamentina rivers.
Delighted with the Mitchell-grass and salt-bush country which the
party had discovered a few days before, four of their number were
now making a flying trip round in order to ascertain the extent of
the “good country.” Hearing from their trained native scouts of
the village on the rocky water-hole, they have decided to disperse
the dwellers therein after the usual fashion, that still obtains
in Australia when land belonging to and inhabited by the weaker
aboriginal race is being taken up.
A consultation is being held by the four whites in the shadow of a
group of native plum-trees. The two scouts, both armed with Snider
carbines, stand close by, and answer the questions put to them from
time to time in the strange pigeon-English taught them by their
masters. Each carries a tomahawk in the cartridge-belt that, fastened
round his dark, oily waist, forms his only article of clothing.
“Well, it’s too dashed early to go near them beggars yet, by least
three hours,” says one of the white men at last.
“And yet,” he adds to himself, “it’s risky not to get the job done,
for if that blank, blank Englishman got scent of what I’m really
after in pushing up here, he’d try his best to let the black devils
escape. We’ll go back,” he adds aloud, with a curse, “to the old-man
sand-hills by the clay-pan, where I sent Jackie back with the
pack-horses. It won’t do to stop here, or the black devils, curse
’em, will drop on us, you bet. So we’ll retire and doss down for a
couple of hours’ camp—say till one o’clock. Take us an hour to reach
the beggars; half-past two’s the time to catch ’em sleeping.”
Turning to one of his boys, he asks,—
“How many black beggars sit down alonger camp, Bingerie?”
Bingerie, who has been close to the village that our readers have
just left, and on business not altogether unconnected, as country
newspapers would say, with the proposed slaughter of its inhabitants,
murmurs huskily in reply,—
“Mine bin think him plenty black fellow sit down longer camp.
Big fellow mob. Plenty little beggar, plenty pickaninnie all
about gunyah.” The speaker’s black face wrinkles up into a cruel,
Satan-like grin, as he touches the tomahawk in his belt, the two
actions boding no good for the said pickaninnies if he gets them
in his clutches. Then glancing with cunning, obsequious eyes at
his master’s face, to try and catch through the darkness a facial
expression of approval, he continues, “Mine see um plenty gin, plenty
little beggar gin (little women, _i.e._, girls); mine catch um,
by’m-bye.”
The white men laugh at this, and the “boss,” flinging a stick
of “station-twist” to the black imp before them, gives him some
directions.
“Well, Bingerie, you black devil, there’s some ’baccy for you. Now,
you see that fellow star,” point-to that part of the heavens where
the constellation of Orion’s belt was looking down from the calm
Australian sky upon the group of explorers,—“you see one, two, three
fellow star. All the same star longer brandy bottle.”
“Me know,” murmurs the black “boy,” with a smile of pleasant
recollections crossing his attentive features for an instant.
“White fellow go alonger gunyahs, when three fellow star catch ’em
that fellow branch. Big fellow hoot then, eh! you black limb of
Satan, you!”
The black “boy”—all aboriginal male servants of Australians
are called “boys,” regardless of the age to which they have
attained—regards the overhanging branch, and, mentally gauging the
time it will take for the stars indicated to reach it on their track
westward ho! across the heavens, grunts “Me know,” and slinks off as
noiselessly as a cat after sparrows, and presently reappears with
another attendant sprite, both of them being mounted on wiry little
horses, and leading the steeds of the rest of the party.
“Now, Jim,” says the man who has previously spoken to one of the
others, as they ride over the sound-deadening sand, “we’ll have a
camp for a couple of hours, and then we’ll proceed to give these
cursed niggers something to let ’em know we’re not to be trifled
with. Curse their black hides, I’ve tried kindness, and I’ve tried
the other thing; but curse me if it ain’t less trouble to clear ’em
off first thing,—I’ve always found it so, instead of having to shoot
’em in compartments afterwards.” He laughs a short, hard, hac! hac!
as he finishes, to which his companion responds with,—
“My trouble’s about shooting of ’em hither way, curse their livers;
all in the day’s work. Safe to light up yet, capting?”
“Not yet,” replies the “boss;” “round the sand-hill it’ll be all
right,” and soon the party emerging from the brushwood, where a dark,
spinifax-covered sand-hill overhangs an empty water-hole, pipes are
lit, and the horses given in charge of the “boys;” the whites lying
down for a spell, for they have ridden many weary miles that day.
Let us return to the village. Whilst we have been away, two braves
have arrived at the water-hole with a message-stick for the head man
of the village from the Eta-booka branch of the tribe. This curious
means of communication consists of a piece of wood about five inches
long—the half of a split length of a small branch. On the flat side
a number of transverse notches have been cut with some rather blunt
tool, probably a flint-knife. The larger cuts denote the names of
men and places; the smaller are symbols of sentences. The message,
which is soon read, is to the effect that Eta-booka people have
seen the white strangers whose approach has alarmed the Paree-side
villagers; and finishes by proposing a “meeting of the clans” for
the next day. A reply message is determined on, manufactured, and
despatched by the trusty runners, who start homewards with rapid
feet, happy in the possession of a small piece of ochre each, with
which they intend to beautify themselves at the “full dress” meeting
to be held.
The thought of combination and safety on the morrow now sends the
villagers, tired with the excitement of late events, to their gunyahs
on the hill; and soon slumbering, they do not see the fateful fall
of myriads of _Ditchiecoom aworkoo_, shooting stars, that takes
place at one o’clock. Deder-re-re is restless, however, in his
smoke-filled wurley; and, half awake, dreams he is on one of his
distant expeditions, and that the southern night-owl is screeching
to its mate, as it flits past him on its ghostly wings. Suddenly he
wakes. He listens, with upraised head. Yes, there is no mistaking
it; the cry he heard in his dreams comes to his ears once more.
_Creek-e-whie, creek-e-whie_, this time from the back of the hill.
It is answered by a somewhat similar call from the water-hole below.
A southern bird up here; and two of them. Trained hunter-warrior
that he is, Deder-re-re takes in the situation in an instant. Foes
are at hand, probably the dreaded white devils; and are surrounding
the camp, signalling their position to each other, before the final
attack, by imitating the cries of a night-bird. Smiling to himself
at the foolish mistake of the enemy in using the note of a bird
foreign to the district, he prepares for action. A touch and a
whispered word to the wife of his bosom, and he slinks out of the
gunyah, crawling on noiseless hands and knees to warn his fellows in
the other huts. His sharp sense of hearing, made doubly powerful now
that all his savage heart holds dear is in peril, distinguishes the
crushing of branches close by. Only white men could be the cause of
that, he instinctively guesses. A passing dingo or emu would brush by
the branches, and a black foe would make no noise whatever. It is too
late for resistance. He must alarm the camp openly and effectively
at once, and perhaps his loved ones may escape in the general
excitement. A bright idea, heroic as ingenious, suddenly strikes him.
If he can get the enemy down by the river flat to chase him, and at
the same time make noise enough to wake his brethren, perhaps the
majority of the latter will be able to reach the water-hole, their
only chance of escape, through the gap thus formed in the circle of
foes. With a fearful yell, he therefore springs to his feet, and
bounds down the rocky side of the hill, sending a rattling avalanche
of stones all round him as he goes, and reaches the flat below.
Here the white “boss,” having arranged his men, is taking up his
position for potting the black fellows as they make for the water,
as his long experience in taking up “new country,” and knocking down
the inhabitants thereof, has taught him they are sure to do. The
cool-headed white man hears Deder-re-re’s yell, and can just see him
as he bounds past the smouldering fire towards him. A snap-shot
rings through the air, and the black fellow, springing upwards, falls
dead upon the red-hot embers, crushing and fanning them into a sudden
blaze, that shows the dark, flying forms of the villagers rushing
towards the water-hole. Now ring the short, sharp carbine shots
through the still morning air! Now whistling swan-shot from fowling
pieces buzz through the falling leaves! Wild shrieks, deep groans,
the scream of frightened birds, the plunge of swimmers in the water,
and all the fearful turmoil of a night surprise! Where lately the
silent brushwood hooded over its dark image in the lake, the leaves
blush ruddily with the sudden blaze of bursting stars of flame, as
the white men fire upon the swimmers in the water-hole.
Then comparative quiet again. The opening scene in the act of
bloodshed is almost as soon over as begun, and then the fearful work
of despatching the wounded commences. The whites leave this job to
their black accomplices, and retire to the gunyahs on the hill, to
mount guard over those who are giving the _coup de grâce_ to the
unfortunate wretches writhing on the flat below. Well do they know
that their “boys” will miss no opportunity of painting those already
dripping tomahawks of a still deeper tint. Brought from a far-off
district, and believing it to be perfectly legitimate for them to
kill their black brethren if belonging to another tribe, their savage
natures, moreover, trained to the awful work, they glory in a scene
like this. The rapid and sickening thud, thud of their small axes,
right and left, at last ceases as the early blush of dawn begins to
break behind the weird hill to the eastward. The mangled bodies of
some thirty men, women, and children lie here and there amongst the
broken bushes and half-burnt gunyahs; and the wild duck skimming down
on to the once more placid bosom of the little lake, rise again with
frightened squeaks on seeing the ghastly objects on its red-frothed
banks.
“Didn’t do so badly,” says the white man whom the others address
as “boss,” as he looks down from the rugged hill. “Got more than
half the black devils. But I’ll bet their friends won’t come near
this water-hole, at any rate, for a few years to come. No spearing
of ‘fats’ here, when they come down for a ‘nip.’” Then turning his
jolly, sensual face towards one of the other men, as they shoulder
arms and prepare to return to their horses, he asks, with a laugh,
“What did you do with the little gin you caught?”
“Give her ter Nero (one of the ‘boys’) when we was tired of each
other. She’s begun a long ‘doss’ (sleep),” he continues, with a grin
that puckers up one side of his cruel face, winking at the “boss” at
the same time with a bloodshot eye; “guess she’s tired with the fun
she had. Saw her lying precious still jess now, heac! heac!”
The two other white men are gone on in advance a little bit with
the “boys,” being glad to quit the place. Now that the excitement
is over, they begin to find it unpleasant. They have not seen
enough frontier service with squatters yet to harden their hearts
sufficiently to joke at the scene of a holocaust, although when
the water-hole is left behind a mile or two their fast succumbing
consciences will be asleep.
“Yarraman (horses) come this way,” suddenly cries one of the boys,
and throwing himself upon the ground to listen adds, “Two fellow
Yarraman (two horses) come pretty quick.”
The white party stand altogether on the flat, listening, for a few
minutes, and then the less perfect auditory organs of the whites
can distinguish the “property, property, property” of approaching
horsemen. A couple of minutes more, and a rattle of brittle stones,
followed by a brief plunging in the narrow part of the swamp close
by, and two horsemen appear upon the grassy flat, and, bending
upon their horses’ necks to avoid the branches, ride through the
shadows at a walking pace towards the men on foot. The first of the
new-comers to appear in view is a black “boy” of the conventional
type, save that he is better clothed than the usual station native,
and wears a scarlet handkerchief, placed turbanwise, upon his head.
“I’ll be hanged if I wasn’t right about that blank Britisher!”
says the “boss,” angrily, out loud, as the second rider comes into
view. “Why couldn’t the beggar leave this part of the work to me if
he doesn’t like to do it himself, not go poking his nose after me
wherever I go. But I don’t care a cursed shake of a possum’s tail if
the beggar ‘props’ or not at it.” He openly affirms his feeling of
nonchalance, but in his heart he feels very uncomfortable,—which,
seeing that the new-comer is his partner, who is to supply the
necessary funds for stocking the new run with cattle, and for wages,
rations, and fencing wire; and, moreover, since an important contract
between them has just been broken by himself, his irritation is
natural. “Curse me,” he murmurs to himself, biting his lower lip, “if
I’d waited till he’d got accustomed to what the other fellows will
do when they take up the country round us, and he found the niggers
coming for beef on his own run, he’d soon have been the same as all
of us.”
The white rider comes up to the group. The broad brim of his dirty,
white felt hat, turned up in front, so as not to obscure his view,
shows the stern and severe face of a man of about forty-five. He
holds a revolver in his sword hand, is spare of form and sinewy, and
wears a thick brown beard. The bosom of his grey shirt flaps opens as
he moves; and the long stirrup leathers he uses show at once that he
has learned riding elsewhere than in Australia.
“Morning, Sam,” says the “boss,” as the horseman pulls up, “anything
wrong at Bindiacka?”
The other men look on curiously, as if they expected a wordy warfare
and were waiting for the first shot.
“Have not come from the camp,” answers Dyesart, for it is our hero’s
uncle that is eyeing his partner keenly as he replies to the latter’s
question.
“I had a look round the big flat to the eastward after I left you
yesterday. Came across a friendly lot of natives at a place,”
pointing to his “boy,” “Saul says they call Narrabella. Coming back
cut your tracks. Lost them on the ‘gibbers’ (stones) last night. What
have you been doing up here? No row with the natives, I hope? Heard
rifle shots early this morning.”
“We camped here last night,” replies the last speaker’s partner,
turning to avoid the keen eyes fixed upon him; “niggers attacked us,
if you want to know.”
“You camped here, leaving your horses and tucker (food) behind,”
sneers Dyesart, disgusted with the palpable lie.
He continues after a moment,—
“Well, I’ll find out for myself what’s been your game. I’m afraid
I can guess what has happened.” He rides past without another word
into the arena of death, where a few crows are already at work upon
the bodies. Dyesart has seen many awful sights in his time, and is
expecting one now, but the scene overpowers him for a minute with
mingled feelings of horror, pity, and indignation.
Speaking a few words to Saul, who is an educated “boy” he had
obtained from the good missionaries of Rillalpininna on his way up
from Adelaide, he fastens the horses to a tree, and proceeds on foot
to examine the wounds and positions of the corpses.
“A night surprise,” he says to himself; “I thought as much. The
third of the sort I have seen in two years, and yet those smiling
squatters one meets down south swear through thick and thin these
things occur only in the imagination of the missionaries. What
cowardly devils!” he adds aloud, as he stands before the body of the
pretty young mother of Deder-re-re’s children. One dark, shapely
arm still clasps the baby form; the other, crushed and mangled with
attempting to ward off the blows of some weapon, rests upon the
gory, horror-stricken face. Both the woman’s skull and that of her
child have been smashed in with axe blows. Over each body in turn
the sinewy form of “Doctor” Dyesart bends, as he searches for any
wounded that may still be alive for him to succour. But the work
has been too well done. Thirty yards away the boss’s black boys are
peering over the rocks, wondering what he is doing. Dyesart is so
different to the other white men that have come within their ken.
On the road up, his curiosity with regard to rocks and stones, and
his perennial kindness to them and all the other “boys,” has often
much amused them. Presently one of these “boys” spies out a body
amongst the rocks he has not noticed before. It is that of a young
boy,—the one that played with his baby brother, as it lay in its
mother’s arms, last night. The child’s thigh-bone has been broken
by a snider-bullet, which has torn a frightful hole in the limb’s
tender flesh. He is alive and conscious. But with the firm nerves
that he has inherited from his hardy ancestors, he lies motionless,
feigning death, though his soul is racked with agony and fear, and
his mouth is dry and burning with a feverish thirst. Saul is helping
his master in the search, and sees the movements of the other “boys,”
as they proceed to despatch the victim they have hitherto overlooked.
A hurried sign to “Massa Sam,” and the long barrel of a “Colt” rests
for an instant on a steady left arm. Then the combined noise of a
yell and a revolver shot breaks the silence, followed by the ping
of a bullet and the whir of rising crows. Dyesart has shown his
wonderful skill with small arms on many a gold-field, but he never
felt more satisfied with his shooting powers than on this occasion.
The bullet, hitting the black boy’s uplifted tomahawk, hurls it from
his half-dislocated wrist, and poor Deder-re-re’s son still breathes.
The wounded boy is attended to, and then the question of what to
do with him arises. He can scarcely be left behind, for his friends
will hardly venture back to the water-hole for many days. In the
meantime the horrible dingoes, crows, and ants would leave little
of the original youth. Dyesart, too, wants a “boy” (as his nephew
did long afterwards), as he must return Saul to the little mission
station before long. So, after fastening a long branch to the child’s
side and injured limb as a splint, and fixing it securely with
well-trained fingers by means of strips torn from his saddle-cloth
and Saul’s gaudy head-gear, Dyesart makes the little black body look
like a newly “set up” skin in a taxidermist’s laboratory. Little
Deder-re-re, junior, who will figure in future in these pages as
Dyesart’s “boy” Billy, is then placed upon the saddle in front of
Saul; and the waterbags being filled and suspended from the horses’
necks, the two riders proceed across the dreary sand-hills towards
the junction of two wet-season creeks, where the explorers’ camp and
“station” preliminaries have been established. It is late in the
evening when the two horsemen, having been delayed by their wounded
burden, reach the white tents, where the “boss” and his subordinates
have previously arrived; and after a silent meal of damper and duck,
Dyesart says a few words to his partner, as the whites sit round the
fire smoking.
“I am returning south to-morrow,” he begins. “As it is no use, I
suppose, telling fellows like you what I think of your cowardly last
night’s work, all I’ll say is that I feel justified in withdrawing
from the arrangement we made between us about taking up land. When a
man finds he’s made a contract with another fellow who doesn’t carry
out his part of the arrangements, he’s right in getting out of it.”
“I don’t want to shirk my part of the agreements,” growls the “boss.”
“Part of the contract,” calmly continues Dyesart, “between us
was that all collisions with the natives were to be avoided if
possible,—I quote correctly, don’t I?”
“Curse me if I know or care,” comes the muttered reply.
“And that no ‘dispersing,’ ‘rounding-up,’ or employment of the
Native Mounted Police was to be allowed on any new country we should
take up. You have broken this part of the contract several times, I
believe, but this time once too often. I return south immediately,
and if you try to hold me to my agreements with you,—but no, I don’t
think you’ll be such a fool as that. Yon fellows have made me more
orthodox than I was, at any rate,” he says, rising; “I never believed
really in a material hell till to-day, but now I’m sure there must be
one for such cowardly devils as you are.”
Next day Dyesart leaves, with his “boys” and horses, without bidding
farewell to the others of the party, who, though they wouldn’t
confess it for the world, are sorry to lose him with his jolly songs
and genial temperament.
* * * * *
And this was how Dyesart obtained his faithful henchman Billy. He had
the little savage educated with white children in New Zealand, where
the natives have equal rights with the Europeans, and he flourished
into a bright, trustworthy young scholar, like one of those that
any of the half-dozen struggling mission stations of Australia can
produce, in refutation of the popular Australian saying that the
aborigines “are mere animals, and should be treated as such.”
Billy accompanies his preserver on all his later wanderings through
the Australian wilds; and lastly, after laying the remains of his
beloved master beneath the soil, he starts off across the desert with
the treasured message, which when delivered in safety to the nearest
white man, he sinks unconscious and exhausted upon the ground. Billy
thus becomes one of the main instruments of Providence whereby our
hero is set upon his journey and these pages written.
We close this chapter with a saying of the late explorer’s that
expresses his views on a somewhat mooted point: “The true definition
of civilization, it seems to me, is a state of social unselfishness,
combined with useful learning. Knowledge and works that are
antagonistic to this state of society, I do not believe to be
properly designated as civilized.”