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But my reveries were soon disturbed by hearing the call of a native from the opposite bank, and I roused up poor Kaiber from his sleep that he might ascertain what was going on upon the other side.
Many more footsteps are soon seen, and some wells of the natives are next discovered, but alas! all appear dry. Kaiber, a native companion of the party, suddenly starts up from a bed of reeds, where he has been burying his head in a hole of soft mud, with which he had completely swelled himself out, and of which he had helped himself to pretty well half the supply.
I proceeded therefore to collect wood for my fire and ordered Kaiber to make haste and gather some of these mussels, an order which, considering the hungry state he was in, I imagined he would gladly have obeyed; but to my astonishment he refused positively to touch one of them, and evidently regarded them with a superstitious dread and abhorrence.
When a proposal was made to stop for the night at this solitary spot, poor Kaiber resisted it; "I cannot rest here," said he, "for there are many spirits in this place." See, however, a more pleasing picture of a native burying-place, in Mitchell's Three Expeditions, vol. i. p. 321. When Mr.
Poor Kaiber alone lay crouching by my fire, occasionally feeding it with fresh fuel and chanting to himself these two songs, in his own language: Thither, mother oh, I return again, Thither oh, I return again. The other had been sung by the mother of Miago, a native who had accompanied Captain Wickham in the Beagle from the Swan River, and it had made a great impression on the natives.
I here halted the party; and as it was uncertain when we might again fall in with water I commenced a search for it with Kaiber, but after travelling rapidly over a good deal of ground without seeing either water or any traces of Stiles we rejoined the party very much fatigued.
The other clump was about a quarter of a mile to the eastward of us, at which I soon distinguished native fires; as the men were however much exhausted I thought it better not to mention this circumstance to them, and Kaiber and myself, who always slept at a little fire alone, kept a good look out during the night.
Kaiber was a great deal too sensible a fellow to be allowed to remain a prey to so ridiculous a superstition as this was; I therefore ordered him instantly to go and bring some of these mussels to me; that I intended to eat them, but that he could in this respect please himself.
All these misfortunes were set down by the sagacious native to the account of the muscles, nor was it till his master threatened him with a good beating, that Kaiber left off chattering to himself, while his mouth moved with the effect of the extreme cold: "Oh, wherefore did he eat the muscles? Now the Boyl-yas storms and thunder make; Oh, wherefore would he eat the muscles?"
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