boy named Billy, and we had
twelve camels. I approached the Everard Range from the south-westward,
having found a good watering-place, which I called Verney's Wells, in
that direction. There, we met a lot of natives who did not belong to
the Everard Range tribes. At Verney's Wells we had a grand corrobboree
in the warm moonlight; my young men and black boy stripped themselves,
and young and old, black and white, danced and yelled, and generally
made the night hideous with their noise till early morning. After the
ball a grand supper was laid for our exhausted blackmen and brothers.
The material of this feast was hot water, flour, and sugar mixed into
a consistent skilly. I had told the cook to make the gruel thick and
slab, and then pour it out on sheets of bark. Our guests supplied
themselves with spoons, or rather we cut them out of bark for them,
and they helped themselves ad lib. A dozen pounds of flour sufficed to
feed a whole multitude. We left Verney's Wells and made up to the well
in the Ferdinand that I have just mentioned. This we opened out with
shovels, and found a very good supply of water. From thence we
proceeded to my old dinner-camp at the range, where, as I said before,
the whole space about, was filled up with fig-trees. Almost
immediately upon our appearance, we heard the calls and cries and saw
the signal smokes, of the natives. We had to clear a space for the
camp and put up an awning. The water in the two lower holes was so low
that the camels could not reach it, nor could we get enough out with a
bucket. There was plenty of water in the holes above, and as it was
all bare rock we set to work, some of the natives assisting, to bale
the water out of some of the upper holes and splash it over the rocks
into the lower. The weather was very hot, and some of the old men sat
or lay down quite at their ease in our shade. The odours that exude
from the persons of elderly black gentlemen, especially those not
addicted to the operation of bathing, would scarcely remind one of the
perfumes of Araby the Blest, or Australia Felix either, therefore I
ordered these intruders out. Thereupon they became very saucy and
disagreeable, and gave me to understand that this was their country
and their water--carpee--and after they had spoken in low guttural
tones to some of the younger men, the latter departed. Of course I
knew what this meant; they were to signal for and collect, all the
tribe for an attack. I could rea