Most of the honey is consumed on the spot, but part of it is taken to the camp, being transported in baskets specially made for this purpose. These baskets are of the same form as the other baskets made by the natives, but more solid and smaller in size; they are made of bark, so closely joined with wax that they will hold water. Sometimes the honey is carried a short distance on a piece of bark, a border of fine chewed grass being laid round the edges in order to keep it from running off. Sometimes also a palm leaf is used, which is folded and tied at both ends, so that it looks like a trough. It is the same kind of trough as the natives use for carrying water, and can be made in a few minutes.
In almost every hive some old honey is to be found which has fermented and become sour, because these bees, which have only rudimentary stings, are not in possession of any poison to preserve it with. It must also be noted as a remarkable fact that this honey yielded by the poisonless bees never quite agreed with me; it used to give me, nay even the natives, diarrhœa, while on the other hand I can enjoy any quantity of European honey with perfect comfort. The old honey, which the bees do not eat themselves, looks like soft yellow cheese, and the civilised blacks call it old-man-sugar-bag. The blacks do not reject it, but mix it with fresh honey and water in the troughs just described. Fresh honey is also sometimes mixed with water.
This mixture of honey and water is not drunk, as one would suppose, but is consumed in a peculiar manner. The blacks take a little fine grass and chew it, thus making a tuft which they dip in the trough and from which they suck the honey as from a sponge. While they eat they sit crouching round the trough, and as each one tries to get as much as possible, the contents quickly disappear. Where spoons are wanting this would seem a natural and practical invention, and is surely calculated to secure an equitable division of the honey, as in this way it is difficult for any one person to get more than his share. After the meal the tufts are placed in the basket, where they are carried as long as they are fit for use.
The Australian wild honey, which is of a dark brown colour, is hardly equal to the best European. Its aroma is too pungent, and its flavour is not so delicate. In the trunks of the trees it keeps cool even when the weather is very hot, and supplies a healthy, pleasant food; but I could not, like the natives, make a meal of it. I soon grew tired of it, although it now and then formed an agreeable change in my simple bill of fare, and was to some extent a substitute for sugar. In the large scrubs we never found honey.
When I reached Herbert Vale the mail had just arrived. It was a real festival when the postman, twice a month, passed the station and brought us news from the outside world. He was in the habit of spending the night here on his way up to the table-land, where there were some stations. Armed with a revolver or a rifle, a postman must often ride 300 miles to deliver the mail.
Sometimes in an evening the Kanaka and I would sit together at the hearth and listen to the postman’s stories and news from the civilised world. He was a man of varied experience, and a fine specimen of the so-called rough men, who are not, however, always so repulsive as the name would imply. The horse was not to be found that he could not ride; or, as he expressed himself, “I can ride any beast that has got hair on.” He was a reckless fellow, utterly indifferent, always cool and self-possessed, and he shrank from nothing. He cared not what he ate so that he got food, and whether it rained or shone was a matter of supreme indifference to him.
Born in Victoria, he had been obliged to leave that colony on account of some of his youthful exploits, and had come to these uncivilised regions of the north, but ere long his admiration for the fair sex was transferred to the sable beauties of the forest, and for this very reason he had accepted employment in these wilds of the blacks. Upon the whole he was a good-natured fellow, and a type of the working class among the white men of Australia. They are reliable, correct in their habits, and attentive to their duties, open-handed, but reckless and unrestrained in their associations. “I care for nobody, and nobody cares for me” is their motto.
At the station I met another “rough man,” less chivalrous than the postman, and his revolver rested less firmly in his belt. He had encamped close by, and expected to make money by catching living cassowary young for the zoological gardens. He also looked for a kind of palm, which he claimed would make splendid billiard cues. Supplied with tobacco and coloured handkerchiefs as a means of paying the blacks, he made a number of fruitless excursions.
I happened to tell him that I had been present at a borboby, and this aroused his desire to witness the next one, which was to take place in a few days. He did not want me to be the only white man who had seen such a contest, and got the Kanaka to show him the way up there. But both were obliged to save their lives by flight, the blacks having surrounded them, shouting, Talgȏro, talgȏro!—that is, Human flesh, human flesh!
Willy, one of the blacks who sometimes came to the station, had noticed that I had both meat and tobacco, and one day expressed a desire to accompany me. He said, “Go with me to my land, and you shall get both yarri and boongary.” Willy’s land is not far from Herbert Vale, and his mountain tribe was on friendly terms with many of the blacks of Herbert river; but still, being a border tribe, it was on an unfriendly footing with others. As I was fairly well acquainted with Willy, and had some confidence in him, I resolved to visit this region which he praised in such high terms.