Only two of the men have yet heard the important news brought by their red-ochre trader on his return home an hour before, so with the eagerness of children they wait open-eyed for the sage’s answer. Gazing heavenwards, where the stars are fast appearing at their brightest, the old man sits blinking his cunning old whiteless eyes, without apparently having heard the question. Upon his shrivelled, old, monkey-like features, lit by the fitful, dancing glare of the flames, nature has written a long history of privations, of weary trackings and watchings, and of savage battles. Yet there is something decidedly picturesque about him, and even admirable; for there is a certain air of dignity, command, and superior knowledge that makes itself manifest in all his movements.
After a somewhat lengthy silence, broken only by the laughter of the boys, and the distant, musical howling of far-off dingoes, the old man turns his head towards a young man, wearing the Yootchoo, or “string of barter,” and murmurs, “Yathamarow” (you may speak).
All the men present are busy plaiting hair, scraping the thigh-bones of emus for dagger-making, and the like; but they cease their work as their trader, who has the distinctive red-ochre marks upon his body that show his profession, begins to speak.
“Three are the moons that have broken, as the Nerre (lake-shells) break upon the wave-beaten shore, since I departed for the land of the Dieyerie, for the land of the Yarrawaurka. The sun is hot. The birds fly only in the shade. After two days water is needed by the man who carries a weight.” The speaker proceeds, in a roundabout way, to notify to his hearers that, partly through want of water and partly by fear, he had not cared to follow up a certain discovery he had made,—of approaching strangers.
“They travelled slowly,” he continued, gesticulating, and glancing round as his growing excitement fired the faces of his audience with reflected interest.
“Their heads were ornamented with the white moongarwooroo of mourning, but worn differently to ours. Their skin is covered with hair like the Thulka (native rodent), and they carry the fire-sticks of the southern people in their hands. Their women are large as sand-hills, and bent double with the weight of their loading,—their black hair sweeping the sand, and their resemblance to emus in the distance being great.”
We are bound to pause again, to explain that the natives of the interior have often told us they mistook the first-comers’ horses for their women, as they carried the packs, the females of a native party on the march always taking the part of porters. This will explain the ochre trader’s error.
A general conversation follows for a time, when the red-marked native cries,—
“Listen! I have learned a new Wonka (song).” Then commencing to mark time with his nodding head, and tapping an accompaniment with two carved boomerangs, he commences to chant the following verse:—
“Pooramana, oh poor fellows,