Where grass, nor herb, nor shrub takes root,
Save the poisonous thorns that pierce the foot.”
Then glancing downwards over the little patch of verdure round the solitary water-hole, where the grey smoke of the camp-fire and the colour and commotion amongst the moving men and horses formed a little gem of life in the vast setting of deathlike stillness around, Claude’s thoughts take a serious turn, and he enters into conversation with his companion General Gordon, with the idea of discovering if the aboriginal mind has any notions of a Supreme Being as conceived by Europeans. But although the black has been amongst station civilization for some years, and has even been interviewed by a clergyman of the Church of England upon the subject of his soul, his answer is hardly satisfactory:—
“Yes, boss, mine know alle ’bout Gord. Missionary him bin tell me, ‘Gord alle same ole man sit down longer sky.’ Missionary tell me budgeree (good) you yabber (say), yabber, ‘Give it to-day mine damper, give it to-day mine tuck-out.’ Mine bin yabber, yabber, plenty long time; oh, plenty long time. But,” added the speaker in a sulky voice, evidently disgusted with the treatment he had received, “but bale (not) mine get it tuck-out, bale mine get it lillie bit tuck-out.” General Gordon turns to catch and swallow a grasshopper, and then, shaking his woolly mat of hair, further expresses his opinions, in the following remarkable language: “Bale mine think it Gord sit down longer sky. No good de ole man. Him only like it white fellow; no like it poor black beggar.”
Claude ventures to calm the ruffled feelings of the General by suggesting that in a future life black fellows may possibly have a better time of it.
“Yes, boss,” excitedly exclaims the “boy,” his face altering from an expression of injured worth to one of perfect faith in his noble existence. “Yes, bime-by mine bin kick out” (By-and-by I die).
The speaker points eastwards, as his race often do when speaking of dying. “Bime-by me kick out, then me jump up white beggar. Me jump up stockman. Budgeree (very good), mine like it.”
Claude tries to conceive what the General finds in life worth living for when he can look forward with pleasure to a future life as a stockman, which, in common with most station blacks, he evidently firmly believes in.
Our young friend unconsciously follows the lines of reasoning laid down long since by a celebrated wit, when he finally concludes that it is probably the same with blacks as with whites, in that, “By the time the emptiness of life is discovered, living has become a fatal habit.”
Old Williams now joins Claude upon the hill-top, and, looking carefully round about him on the ground as if in search of something he has dropped, presently deposits himself upon a chocolate-coloured block of sandstone with a grunt of satisfaction.