Angland has heard of the feather slippers used by the natives of some parts of Australia when particularly anxious to abstain from leaving any dangerous trail behind them during their peregrinations, but Billy’s are the first he has seen. And on catching up to Williams, and telling him of the method in which the black youth has taken his departure, the old miner spins Claude so many interesting yarns about the ingenious devices employed by the aborigines to avoid being hunted down by their native or foreign foes, that he determines to get up an exhibition of some of them when his pilot returns with the two new auxiliaries.
But, leaving little Joe to lead the rest of the party on to the next water-hole, let us follow the dark-skinned Billy on his way to the village. This young man has learned a good deal about the kind of country he is now traversing during the last few weeks, and, moreover, he has journeyed to his friends’ hamlet more than once before from about the same point where he has just entered the forest. So he wends his way in a fairly straight course, and is not more than three hours doing the seven miles of rough travelling that has to be got over before he reaches the vicinity of the Myall camp. After leaving the forest at the foot of the wild range, his way lies for the greater part up the dried-up bed of a mountain torrent, that has cut its way during countless ages through the enormous mass of grey granite of which the mountain is composed. High above the dark boulder-strewn path of the storm-stream, the grim old cliffs rise on either hand, their broken fronts decked here and there with clinging tufts of herbage, and crowned with overflowing wealth of perennial vegetation of the dark forest on their summits. Here and there the out-crop of a quartz reef stretches across the path with great, teeth-like projections of white, flinty rock, and now and again the brown face of what is a waterfall after the rains necessitates a bit of climbing. At last the traveller reaches the crown of the watershed, and follows the rocky ridge of the range northwards for a couple of miles. The forest, that has hitherto consisted chiefly of various kinds of eucalypti, some of which give off an almost overpowering odour much resembling peppermint, now changes its character suddenly, for here is the edge of the basaltic “top-dressing” that covers the bigger lines of ranges, lying to the eastward, with its characteristic vegetation.
Billy, arrived at this point, sits down to rest awhile near a mound of stone chips, which is the sole monument remaining of a past generation of aborigines who once had a stone-axe manufactory here. A number of “wasters” and half-finished adzes, made of basalt, are lying about, and at a future day, no doubt, will grace some museum, when the old chip-heap has been discovered by some prowling ethnologist. Over Billy’s head swings the flat nest of a king-pigeon,—built, as is usually the case, on the extreme end of a bough,—and thousands of beautiful insects, notably some gigantic green and day-flying moths, are making their erratic, aërial promenades through the glades bordering upon the gloomy jungle.
No white man’s eye could have detected the slightest sign of the track that Billy now commences to follow, but to an aboriginal it is a fairly clear one. Here and there an overturned stone, a broken twig, or a crushed leaf make it patent to the young man that some one has passed this way towards the village only a short time before. This is a cheerful sign for Billy, knowing as he does that so great is the fear that his friends the villagers have of being discovered by the neighbouring squatters, that it was highly probable they might have shifted their camp upon his leaving for the station. Presently the traveller stops and glances at a palm-leaf that is lying across the almost invisible track he is following. It has apparently fallen there naturally, but the black understands its signification, and immediately alters his course. And after a rough scramble down the precipitous sides of a densely scrubbed ravine, he comes to where he can hear the sound of voices below him. Creeping like a snake amongst the dank, humid undergrowth, Billy gets near enough to recognize the sounds as proceeding from the vocal chords of a party of the friends he has come to interview. So he begins a low guttural chant to apprise those beneath him of his arrival.
“Kolli! kolli!” (Hush! be silent!) one of the talkers ejaculates, and the talking ceases immediately. Soon afterwards, without heralding her approach by the slightest noise, a woman stands before our black friend, clad only in the undress costume of her native shades; and after a few brief words of recognition have passed between her and the new-comer, the former returns to her people below, and reporting “all serene,” a united chorus of welcome invites Billy to descend to them.
Had a civilized European been present at the meeting in the merry woods, and had he been able to have understood the meaning of Billy’s opening chant and the reply chorus, he might have been forcibly reminded of certain of the musical dramas of the old world.
The happy, beribboned peasant of the operatic stage has for years borne the brunt of many facetious remarks, simply because he cannot indulge even in the most commonplace conversation without surrounding his words with a shroud of fascinating trills. Yet here in the Australian woods and plains we find the untutored savage, like the wild birds round him, doing the same kind of thing, and much given to confabulatory chants and choruses. It truly would seem quite within the bounds of possibility that ere the joyous dwellers in Arcadia had relinquished their independent notions and simple acorn diet before the incoming flood of European civilization, they really did “carry on” in the harmonious manner in which they are represented to us to-day by the gifted authors of modern opera.
But whilst we have been thus sadly digressing from our story Billy has climbed down to the aboriginals in the gully below, and finds he has been following up a hunting party that, having been out all the morning, is now on its way home. Half-a-dozen men, armed with womeras, spears, and nulla nullas, stand waiting for him to appear. Most of them are resting on one leg, the sole of one foot being pressed against the inside of the other leg at the knee joint, after the local method of “standing at ease,” their spears or a neighbouring branch being used to keep their bodies in a state of equilibrium. One of the men, the runaway station boy spoken of by Billy to Claude, who belongs to the former young man’s Mordu, or class-family, steps forward and welcomes the new arrival by embracing him. Then, after a few guttural ejaculations, the party forms Indian file and proceeds villagewards; three or four women carrying the hunters’ game, which consists of a couple of rock-wallaby and a few bandicoots, bringing up the rear.
As the natives get into the vicinity of the village, they take every precaution to leave no track behind them, and each individual enters the thicket in which the little collection of gunyahs is ensconced by a different route.
It is quite remarkable how the inhabitants of these scrub hamlets manage to travel to and from their habitations, for years sometimes, without leaving anything like a beaten track which might attract the notice of a passing foe.