“This inspector introduced himself to me as a friend of one Inspector Puttis, whom he says was a friend of uncle’s. This Puttis sends word that Billy has disappeared from Murdaro station; but as I never mentioned the fact that I wanted to find Billy to any one here till after I received this message, I am rather at a loss to understand it altogether.
“Now my other acquaintance here—the missionary cuss I mentioned—curiously re-echoes the last words in uncle’s letter, namely, to distrust the police. And in faith I believe they’re a bad lot entirely, although I suppose there are some exceptions.
“It is partly in consequence of this that I have not accepted an invitation to go shooting with the inspector to-day, and am writing to you instead.
“My old miner friend got bitten by a large poisonous black spider at Cairns, and is hors de combat. So I have been obliged to leave him behind for a time with Don, who is turning out a grand little fellow. These two will follow me to Mount Silver next week, when I shall start for Murdaro station immediately. I am not wasting my time in the interim, although I itch to start, but am making myself acquainted with the ways of station-life and mining matters in this wild part of the world. If Billy arrives at the mission station, as Mr. Feder thinks he probably will, I shall be communicated with at once. But ‘how do I manage without my little henchman Don?’ you’ll be after asking. Well, that brings me to the main subject matter of this epistle. I have a second ‘boy Friday’ now; and what is more, he’s black as a crow, and, moreover, I bought him. Yes, in the year of our Lord, 1889, in the civilized street of a town in an English colony, I followed the custom of the place, and purchased the little black specimen of humanity that is now amusing a party of his aboriginal friends, over there by the town well, by imitating with a piece of stick the way I brush my teeth of a morning, which operation I noticed has amazed him muchly, and is probably indulged in by few of the whites about here.
“I travelled alone as far as this place, being anxious to get on here; and my obliging host—who talks broad Scotch, although he is by two generations a colonist—advised me to get a ‘boy,’ as all black servants, regardless of age, are called here, to look after my two horses. Well, to cut the story short, I paid £2 for little Joe to a carrier whom ‘mine host’ informed of my wants. Joe is a great help, and according to the unwritten law of the place,—which appears to be supported by what little pulpit power they have here,—my ‘boy’ is, in this free land, my property, body and soul.
“Yes, coming here from New Zealand one feels as if he had somehow descended into the slave countries of Mrs. Beecher Stowe, and the odd part of it is that its very existence is unknown in England, neither in Sydney nor Brisbane to any great extent. But these places, it is true, have their own little white slaves ‘always with them,’ as my experiences amongst the newsboys, when I got little Don, has taught me.
“Although I did pander to the local custom, against which I am speaking, in buying Joe, I trust to do something good for him to cover this sin of mine, and will bring him back to New Zealand with me.
“Any one who boasts of being the ‘free-born son of an Englishman’ cannot look coolly on at the treatment of the unfortunate blacks up here in Queensland. The poor wretches one sees forced to work by brutal squatters, carriers, ‘cockatoo’ settlers, and others, have no hope to cheer them like those mentioned by your old American poet-friend, John Greenleaf Whittier:—
“‘O’er dusky faces, seamed and old,
And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,