ession that I was one of their own black
servants playing some joke upon them. When I was but a few yards away,
however, I called out in English--

"Halloa, boys! have you room for me?"

They were too much taken aback to reply immediately, and then one of them
said--

"Oh yes; come and sit down."

As I seated myself among them they asked--

"Have you been out prospecting?"

"Yes," I said quietly, "and I have been away a very long time."

"And where did you leave your mates?" was the next question.

"I had no mates," I told them. "I undertook my wanderings practically
alone."

They looked at one another, winked, and smiled incredulously at this.
Then one of them asked me if I had found any gold.

I said, "Oh yes, plenty of gold," and then the next query--a most natural
one--was, "Well, why have you not brought some of the stuff back with
you? How far have you travelled?"

I told them I had been tramping through the heart of the Continent for
eight or nine months, and that I had no means of carrying nuggets and
quartz about with me. But this explanation only served to renew their
merriment, which reached its climax when, in an unguarded moment, I put a
question which I had been burning to ask--

"What year is this?"

"This is Bellamy's 'Looking Backward' with a vengeance," cried one of the
prospectors--a sally that was heartily appreciated by the whole of the
company, with the exception of myself. I began to think that if this was
the reception civilisation had for me, it were better for me to have
remained among my faithful savages.

But in a few minutes the men's demeanour changed, and it was obvious that
they looked upon me as a harmless lunatic just emerged from the bush. I
was assured that this conclusion was correct when I saw the diggers
looking at one another significantly and tapping their foreheads. I
resolved to tell them nothing further about myself, well knowing that the
more I told them the more convinced they would be that I was a wandering
lunatic. I learned that these men were a party of decent young fellows
from Coolgardie. They offered me a meal of tea and damper, and pressed
me to stay the night with them, but I declined their hospitality. I
gratefully accepted a pair of trousers, but declined the offer of a pair
of boots, feeling certain that I could not yet bear these on my feet. My
rough benefactors told me that I should find many other camps to the
south and west; so I