ver-lead, which I smelted with the object of obtaining
lead to beat out into plates. I also went some hundreds of miles for the
sake of getting copper, and found great quantities of ores of different
kinds in the Kimberley district.

A very strange experience befell Yamba not long after I had settled down
among the blacks in my mountain home; and it serves to illustrate the
strictness with which the laws against poaching are observed. The
incident I am about to relate concerned me very nearly, and might have
cost me my life as well as my wife. Well, it happened that Yamba and I
were one day returning from one of the many "walkabouts" which we were
constantly undertaking alone and with natives, and which sometimes
extended over several weeks and even months. We had pitched our camp for
the afternoon, and Yamba went off, as usual, in search of roots and game
for the evening meal. She had been gone some little time when I suddenly
heard her well-known "coo-eey" and knowing that she must be in trouble of
some kind, I immediately grasped my weapons and went off to her rescue,
guiding myself by her tracks.

A quarter of a mile away I came upon a scene that filled me with
amazement. There was Yamba--surely the most devoted wife a man,
civilised or savage, ever had--struggling in the midst of quite a crowd
of blacks, who were yelling and trying forcibly to drag her away. At
once I saw what had happened. Yamba had been hunting for roots over the
boundary of territory belonging to a tribe with whom we had not yet made
friends; and as she had plainly been guilty of the great crime of
trespass, she was, according to inviolable native law, confiscated by
those who had detected her. I rushed up to the blacks and began to
remonstrate with them in their own tongue, but they were both truculent
and obstinate, and refused to release my now weeping and terrified Yamba.
At last we effected a compromise,--I agreeing to accompany the party,
with their captive, back to their encampment, and there have the matter
settled by the chief. Fortunately we had not many miles to march, but,
as I anticipated, the chief took the side of his own warriors, and
promptly declared that he would appropriate Yamba for himself. I
explained to him, but in vain, that my wife's trespass was committed all
unknowingly, and that had I known his tribe were encamped in the
district, I would have come immediately and stayed with them a few
nights.

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