TRANSLATION.
“Put colour in the bags,
Close it all round,
And make the netted bag
All the colours of the rainbow.”
But leaving the peaceful village for a time, let us turn our mental night-glass towards a point four miles down the river’s course. Here the stream, having left the rocky, sandstone country, rushes its spasmodically flowing waters, from time to time, between banks of alluvial mud. A rank growth of various herbs, rushes, and fair-sized gum-trees has arisen here from the rich soil, whose fertile juices are more often replenished by the river than that farther afield. It is very dark below the branches; but if the meagre starlight could struggle in sufficient quantity between the pointed leaves, we should be able to see upon the water’s brim a strange mark in these solitudes, the footprint of a horse’s hoof,—the first of its kind that has ever refreshed its parched and grateful throat in the little billabong before us.
The ochre-hunter was in error when he calculated the speed at which the strangers were approaching his village. He had seen only the pack-train, which was proceeding leisurely to Palieu water-hole. The invaders were squatter-explorers pushing northwards in the van of that great red wave of European enterprise that, set in motion by the land fever of the “Seventies,” burst with a cruel and unbridled rush over the native lands lying north of the Cooper and Diamentina rivers.
Delighted with the Mitchell-grass and salt-bush country which the party had discovered a few days before, four of their number were now making a flying trip round in order to ascertain the extent of the “good country.” Hearing from their trained native scouts of the village on the rocky water-hole, they have decided to disperse the dwellers therein after the usual fashion, that still obtains in Australia when land belonging to and inhabited by the weaker aboriginal race is being taken up.
A consultation is being held by the four whites in the shadow of a group of native plum-trees. The two scouts, both armed with Snider carbines, stand close by, and answer the questions put to them from time to time in the strange pigeon-English taught them by their masters. Each carries a tomahawk in the cartridge-belt that, fastened round his dark, oily waist, forms his only article of clothing.
“Well, it’s too dashed early to go near them beggars yet, by least three hours,” says one of the white men at last.