“Very likely,” replied the beach-comber. “Never heard of the parties. They’re superstitious beggars, these Kanekas. You’ve heard of buying a thing ‘for a song’? Well, I got my station for a whistle. They believe that spirits twitter and whistle, and you’ll hardly get them to go out at night, even with a boiled potato in their hands, which they think good against ghosts, for fear of hearing the bogies. So I just went whistling, ‘Bonny Dundee’ at nights all round the location I fancied, and after a week of that, not a nigger would go near it. They made it over to me, gratis, with an address on my courage and fortitude. I gave them some blankets in; and that’s how real property used to change hands in the Pacific.”
Footnotes:
[{1}] From Wandering Sheep, the Bungletonian Missionary Record.
[{6}] 1884. Date unknown. Month probably June.
[{23a}] The original text of this prophecy is printed at the close of Mr. Gowles’s narrative.
[{23b}] It has been suggested to me that some travelled priest or conjurer of this strange race may have met Europeans, seen hats, spectacles, steamers, and so forth, and may have written the prophecy as a warning of the dangers of our civilization. In that case the forgery was very cunningly managed, as the document had every appearance of great age, and the alarm of the priest was too natural to have been feigned.
[{25}] How terribly these words were afterwards to be interpreted, the reader will learn in due time.
[{30}] I afterwards found it was blue smalt.
[{74}] I have never been able to understand Mr. Gowles’s infatuation for this stuck-up creature, who, I am sure, gave herself airs enough, as any one may see.—MRS. GOWLES.
[{76}] This was the name of a native vintage.