To Yokkai I had given a whole suit of clothes as a reward for his services. I am sorry to say it was about all I was able to do for him. He was, however, exceedingly happy in his first dress and felt more secure against strange blacks, who would judge by his clothes that he was in the service of a white man. The natives hesitate to attack a black man who is dressed, for they are afraid they may be shot by his master. Yokkai had of late talked much about going to Norway—across the great water in the great canoe. There he was sure of getting all he wanted of flour and tobacco. In Norway he would get him a wife, he said. She must be a white woman, but one was enough; it would not be good to have two, he thought. I had also taught him to say Norway, and he believed that we were now bound for that country, with its mountains of “food and tobacco.”
On the way my old pack-horse tumbled backwards down a steep river bank, and lay on his side with my valuable baggage under him. I got him up again, and was happy to find that no damage had been done. With the exception of this mishap, I arrived unscathed at Mr. Gardiner’s farm at Lower Herbert, where I met with the most friendly reception.
Great changes had been made here since I left. I could scarcely recognise the place. Near the farm a whole sugar plantation had grown up. Where the dense scrubs flourished when I was there before, the fields were now covered with sugar-cane, and there was life and bustle everywhere. On the plantation I got some boxes, in which I packed my collection, and soon was ready to go on board a barge which was to carry me down the river to Dungeness.
Yokkai took a deep interest in all that he saw and heard. He lived high, stuffed himself with sugar-cane, and pretended to be a man of great importance; in this case it certainly was “the clothes that made the man.” But everything was so new and strange to him that he did not feel perfectly at home. He had already given up the journey across the great water, and he was longing to get back to his own mountains.
I had taken precautions that he should in no way suffer in “the strange land,” and I also made arrangements for his safe return to his own tribe.
Before I went on board the boat I asked him if he would like to go with me to Norway. He shrugged his shoulders and answered a positive No. I shook his hand and bade him good-bye; but I did not discover the faintest sign of emotion. He gazed at me steadfastly with his large brown eyes beneath his broad-brimmed hat, but did not understand the significance of shaking hands. Thus I parted from my only friend among the savages, and many emotions crowded upon me as the vessel glided away, memories of the stirring days I had passed with him, and a sense of deep gratitude for the many services he had done me.
Upon the whole, I took leave of the country of the blacks and my interesting life in the mountains with strange feelings in my breast. Some of the impressions derived from this grand phase of nature I shall never forget. When the tropical sun with its bright dazzling rays rises in the early morning above the dewy trees of the scrub, when the Australian bird of paradise arranges its magnificent plumage in the first sunbeams, and when all nature awakens to a new life which can be conceived but cannot be described, it makes one sorry to be alone to admire all this beauty. Or when the full moon throws her pale light over the scrub-clad tops of the mountains and over the vast plains below, while the breezes play gently with the leaves of the palm-tree, and when the mystic voices of the night birds ring out on the still quiet night, there is indeed melancholy, but also untold beauty, in such a situation.
I was, however, not sorry to leave the people. I had come to Herbert Vale full of sympathy for this race, which the settler drives before him with the rifle, but after the long months I had spent with them my sympathy was gone and only my interest in them remained. Experience had taught me that it is not only among civilised people that men are not so good as they ought to be.
CHAPTER XXVI
Message sticks—The common origin of the dialects—Remarkably complicated grammar—The language on Herbert river—Comparison of a few dialects.