ing
hideously from ear to ear.

"Truly, a rare specimen of humanity," cried Ned, when he recovered his
composure. "Where did _you_ come from, old boy?"

The digger shook his head, and uttered some unintelligible words.

"It's of no use speaking to him; he don't understand English," said Tom
Collins, with a somewhat puzzled expression.

The two friends made several attempts to ask him, by signs, where he
lived, but they utterly failed. Their first efforts had the effect of
making the man laugh, but their second attempts, being more energetic
and extravagant, frightened him so that he manifested a disposition to
run away. This disposition they purposely encouraged until he fairly
took to his heels, and, by following him, they at last came upon the
village in which his tribe resided.

Here they found an immense assemblage of men, and women, and children,
whose appearance denoted dirtiness, laziness, and poverty. They were
almost all in a state bordering on nudity, but a few of them wore
miscellaneous portions of European apparel. The hair of the men was
long, except on the forehead, where it was cut square, just above the
eyebrows. The children wore no clothes at all. The infants were
carried on stiff cradles, similar to those used by North American
Indians. They all resided in tents, made of brushwood and sticks, and
hundreds of mangy, half-starved curs dwelt along with them.

The hero of the hat and boots was soon propitiated by the gift of a few
inches of tobacco, and Ned Sinton and Tom Collins were quickly on
intimate terms with the whole tribe.

It is difficult to resist the tendency to laugh when a human being
stands before you in a ludicrously-meagre costume, making hideous
grimaces with his features, and remarkable contortions with his limbs,
in the vain efforts to make himself understood by one who does not speak
his language! Ned's powers of endurance were tested in this way by the
chief of the tribe, an elderly man with a beard so sparse that each
stumpy hair might have been easily counted.

This individual was clad in the rough, ragged blue coat usually worn by
Irish labourers of the poorest class. It was donned with the tails in
front; and two brass buttons, the last survivors of a once glittering
double row, fastened it across the back of its savage owner.

"What _can_ he mean?" said Ned, at the close of a series of pantomimic
speeches, in which the Indian vainly endeavoured to get him to