“They may mean well, but if they don’t they will have us at terrible advantage all alone in the woods, and they are fearfully ugly fellows to look at, they must allow,” he observed, coming up close to me, to protect me rather than to seek protection for himself.
Still the blacks seemed so eager that we should go, and made so many signs to us, that I was sure that there was something particular they wished to show us. Had I been as well acquainted with them as I afterwards became I should not have ventured. Still the greater number of murders they have committed must be laid to the white man’s charge. They merely retaliated when treated by him with fearful cruelty and injustice. The white man set them an example which the savages copied. True, many of the convicts were reprobates and outcasts. Not once, but frequently men have gone forth with fire-arms and shot down the blacks as if they had been wild beasts. I speak of days happily gone by.
I called out to Mark to keep in the camp with the men and beasts, and Dick and I followed the black, I repeat that it was a very unwise thing to do.
However, on we went. I told Dick to keep his eyes about him, and his gun ready for use.
Having camped early, there was still plenty of daylight; indeed, the blacks themselves will never move at night, from superstitious feelings,—the dread of meeting evil spirits: of good ones they have no notion. There were a good many blacks about, so we signed them to go on ahead, and that we would follow. They did so—when suddenly they drew back, and we saw before us, on the side of an open glade, under a thick-stemmed tree, a rude hut, and just before it, on the ground, two men, wretched, haggard creatures.
On drawing nearer we discovered that the forms alone of the men were there, the spirit had fled. Not a particle of food was to be found near them, but there were the ashes of a small fire, and near it two or three pieces of burnt leather. They had been endeavouring, when too late, to satisfy the cravings of hunger with such food. We had more to discover.