The horses were scarcely tethered and our fire made when four more natives joined the party; their names were Noogongoo, Kurral, Jeebar, and Dudemurry; they brought us a present of twenty-seven freshwater tortoises, the average weight of each of which was half a pound. They said that, although the lake was called Mooloore, the name of the land we were sitting on was Doondalup.
STORY-TELLING.
As soon as supper was finished they became very talkative, and, in a sort of recitative, recounted various adventures; and, when they conceived that they had sufficiently entertained me, they requested me to give them an account of my adventures in the northern part of the country, where they had heard from other natives that I had been for some time.
Having now acquired some knowledge of their language, I was able to make myself tolerably intelligible to them, and they listened with the greatest anxiety and interest to the various misfortunes that befel me. When they heard that I had been wounded by the natives to the north no persuasions or protestations upon my part could convince them that my object in now proceeding in that direction again was merely to gratify curiosity, and not from motives of revenge; but they kept continually requesting me not to attempt to kill anybody until I had passed a spot named Yalgarrin, about ten days journey to the north, and they then advised me indiscriminately to shoot everybody I saw; and were the more urgent in pressing the adoption of this course upon me from the fact of a quarrel existing between some of their relatives and the tribe dwelling there.
After I had exhausted the theme of my northern journey they desired me to give them some information with regard to England; I therefore related various circumstances which I thought would amuse them. Amongst other things I described the track of the sun in the heavens in those northern latitudes; this they fully understood, and it excited their most unqualified admiration. I now spoke to them of still more northern latitudes; and went so far as to describe those countries in which the sun never sets at a certain period of the year.
ITS IMPRESSION ON THE NATIVES.
Their astonishment now knew no bounds: "Ah I that must be another sun; not the same as the one we see here," said an old man; and in spite of all my arguments to the contrary, the others adopted this opinion. I wound up the night's conversation by an account of the diminutive Laplanders, clothed in skins of the seal instead of kangaroo; and amidst the shouts of applause that this account excited I laid down to rest. I this night observed a circumstance which had often before struck me, namely, that savages care but little for narratives concerning civilized man, but that anything connected with other races in the same state is most greedily received by them.
December 1.
Before sunrise this morning the two natives Yenmar and Nganmar, who had accompanied us from Perth, came to me and said that, from what I had told them last night, it appeared that some cause of quarrel existed between myself and the natives to the north; and that, however pacifically I might now express myself, they felt convinced that, if a fair opportunity offered, I should revenge myself upon some northern native. Now they, being southern men, had nothing whatever to do with these quarrels and disputes, and therefore they should at once return to Perth.
I did my utmost by means of protestations and promises to induce them to forego this resolution, but in vain; and the only boon I could gain from them was that they would accompany me to another tribe, distant about five miles, some of whom would probably go on with me; they, at the same time, assured me that they would preserve the most profound secrecy as to the fact of my having any cause of quarrel to the northward; and advised me to hold my tongue upon this point and quietly shoot the first man I saw there.