h me, she would reply, "Your people are my
people, and your God (spirit) my God. I will go with you wherever you
take me."

At length everything was ready, and I paid a final farewell, as I
thought, to my black friends in Cambridge Gulf, after a little over
eighteen months' residence among them. They knew I was venturing on a
long journey overland to another part of the country many moons distant,
in the hope of being able to get into touch with my own people; and
though they realised they should never see me again, they thought my
departure a very natural thing. The night before we left, a great
_corroboree_ was held in my honour. We had a very affectionate leave-
taking, and a body of the natives escorted us for the first 100 miles or
so of our trip. At last, however, Yamba, myself, and the faithful dog
were left to continue our wanderings alone. The reliance I placed upon
this woman by the way was absolute and unquestioning. I knew that alone
I could not live a day in the awful wilderness through which we were to
pass; nor could any solitary white man. By this time, however, I had had
innumerable demonstrations of Yamba's almost miraculous powers in the way
of providing food and water when, to the ordinary eye, neither was
forthcoming. I should have mentioned that before leaving my black people
I had provided myself with what I may term a native passport--a kind of
Masonic mystic stick, inscribed with certain cabalistic characters. Every
chief carried one of these sticks. I carried mine in my long, luxuriant
hair, which I wore "bun" fashion, held in a net of opossum hair. This
passport stick proved invaluable as a means of putting us on good terms
with the different tribes we encountered. The chiefs of the blacks never
ventured out of their own country without one of these mysterious sticks,
neither did the native message-bearers. I am sure I should not have been
able to travel far without mine.

Whenever I encountered a strange tribe I always asked to be taken before
the chief, and when in his presence I presented my little stick, he would
at once manifest the greatest friendliness, and offer us food and drink.
Then, before I took my departure, he also would inscribe his sign upon
the message stick, handing it back to me and probably sending me on to
another tribe with an escort. It often happened, however, that I was
personally introduced to another tribe whose "frontier" joined that of my
late host