f about twenty head of
cattle a day, by the wild tribes who had assembled from the Darling and
lower Bogan on that occasion. Thermometer in tent 109 deg. at noon, wind
W.N.W.

23D DECEMBER.--We crossed the Bogan (flowing eastward) at Mr. Templar's
station at Gananaguy, and the overseer most hospitably stood by the party
as it passed with a bucket of milk, of which he gave a drink to each of
the men. Bultje put us on the right road to the next nearest water-holes
(Mr. Gilmore's station), and having rendered me the service he promised,
I gave him the tomahawk, pipe, and two figs of tobacco promised him, and
also took a sketch of his singularly Socratic face. This native got a bad
name from various stockmen, as having been implicated in the murder of
Mr. Cunningham. Nothing could be more unfounded; and it must indeed
require in a man so situated the wisdom of a Socrates to maintain his
footing, or indeed his life, between the ignorant stockmen or shepherds
on one hand, and the savage tribes on the other. These latter savages
naturally regard those who are half civilised, in the same light as we
should look on deserters to the enemy, and are extremely hostile to them,
while perhaps even his very usefulness to our party had most unjustly
connected this native's name with the murder of one of our number. His
laconic manner and want of language would not admit of any clear
explanation of how much he had done to serve our race--and the
difficulties he had to encounter with his own; while the circumstance of
his having been met with at an interval of ten years in the same valley
in a domesticated state, if it did not establish any claim to the soil,
at least proved his strong attachment to it, and a settled disposition.
Much tact must be necessary on his part to avoid those savages coming by
stealth to carry off his gins; and to escape the wrath of white men, when
aroused by the aggressions of wild tribes to get up a sort of foray to
save or recover their own. How Bultje has survived through all this,
without having nine lives like a cat, still to gather honey in his own
valley, "surpasseth me to know."

We encamped at two large water-holes of the Bogan near Mr. Gilmore's
station, and the overseer sent to the men two buckets of milk. At the
station a well had been made to the depth of eighty feet, but a flood had
come, and risen so high as to wash in the sides and so fill up the well.
The workmen had passed through yellow clay