fellow!"

For three days afterwards I had still to linger there; and if their dogs
ran or barked at me, the women chased them with sticks and stones, and
protected me. One little touch of kindness and sympathy had unlocked
their darkened hearts.

Who wonders that the _dark_ races melt away before the _whites?_ The
pioneers of Civilization _will_ carry with them this demon of strong
drink, the fruitful parent of every other vice. The black people drink,
and become unmanageable; and through the white man's own poison-gift, an
excuse is found for sweeping the poor creatures off the face of the
earth. Marsden's writings show how our Australian blacks are destroyed.
But I have myself been on the track of such butcheries again and again.
A Victorian lady told me the following incident. She heard a child's
pitiful cry in the bush. On tracing it, she found a little girl weeping
over her younger brother. She said, "The white men poisoned our father
and mother. They threaten to shoot me, so that I dare not go near them,
I am here, weeping over my brother till we die!"

The compassionate lady promised to be a mother to the little sufferers,
and to protect them. They instantly clung to her, and have proved
themselves to be loving and dutiful ever since.

CHAPTER L.
NORA.

WHILE I was pondering over Kingsley's words,--about the blacks of
Australia being "poor brutes in human shape," and too low to take in the
Gospel,--the story of Nora, an Aboriginal Christian woman, whom I myself
actually visited and corresponded with, was brought under my notice, as
if to shatter to pieces everything that the famous preacher had
proclaimed. A dear friend told me how he had seen Nora encamped with the
blacks near Hexham in Victoria. Her husband had lost, through drink,
their once comfortable home at a Station where he was employed. The
change back to life in camp had broken her health, and she lay sick on
the ground within a miserable hut. The visitors found her reading a
Bible, and explaining to a number of her own poor people the wonders of
redeeming love. My friend, Roderick Urquhart, Esq., overcome by the
sight, said, "Nora, I am grieved to see you here, and deprived of every
comfort in your sickness."

She answered, not without tears, "The change has indeed made me unwell;
but I am beginning to think that this too is far the best; it has at
last brought my poor husband to his senses, and I will grudge nothing if
God thereby brings