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Well, we scribbled a bit of a letter and sent Warrigal off with it. Wasn't it dangerous for him? Not a bit of it. He could go anywhere all over the whole country, and no trooper of them all could manage to put the bracelets on him. The way he'd work it would be to leave his horse a good way the other side of George Storefield's, and to make up as a regular blackfellow.
Going forward a little, he got time to clear the lock of his rifle, from the oil rag which usually protected it. He turned on his assailants, and sent a bullet amongst them; it hit a tree instead of a blackfellow, but as they still menaced him, his next shot was more successful, when seeing one of their number fall, the rest decamped.
Billy Leura walked all the way from Camperdown, and on the day before the regatta came to my house with a couple of black ducks in his hand. Sissy, six years old, was present; she inspected the blackfellow and the ducks, and listened. Leura said he wanted to sell me the ducks, but not for money; he would take old clothes for them.
On mentioning the circumstance to one of the early settlers, he said my loam had been taken from the spot on which the blacks used to burn their dead. Soon after he arrived at Colac he saw there a solitary blackfellow crouching before a fire in which bones were visible. So, pointing to them, he asked what was in the fire, and the blackfellow replied with one word "lubra."
The native guide Forrest had with him now became rather doubtful as to the exact position of the spot where he professed to have seen the remains, and Forrest, after some searching, came across a large party of the local inhabitants. But they proved anything but friendly, threw dowaks at the blackfellow, and advised the whites to go away before they were killed.
Then they had a nip of rum all round Black Jimmie must have wanted it, for the nulla nulla was knotted, and heavy, and made in the most approved fashion. Then the other blackfellow bent his head, and Jimmie took the club and returned the whack with interest. Then the other fellow hit Jimmie a lick, and took a clout in return.
Suddenly Jacky, whose dark eyes were rolling unnaturally as he glanced all around him, let go the horse he was leading, sprang forward, and entered the tent. He reappeared in a moment. "What is wrong, Jacky? Where is she?" "Gone," was the quick reply. "Myall blackfellow been here and take her away!"
But the want of knowledge displayed by the natives of anything beyond their immediate surroundings, was one great difficulty in the way of the explorers. The blackfellow of Australia seemed to partake largely of the country he lived in. His whole life was one fight for existence, and not even the sudden advent of a strange race could do more than stir him to a languid curiosity.
Joe's gun was charged with shot, and he fired and hit his mark, for the blackfellow dropped suddenly from the top rail, and ran away, putting his hands behind him, and trying to pick out the pellets. One day a white stockman came galloping on his horse up to the door of the hut, his face, hands, shirt and trousers being smeared and saturated with blood.
Then he added that they had better take the saddles off the horses, short-hobble them, and let them feed. "No, boss, they are camped now, 'bout a mile or two mile farther up creek. We can't take horses there country too rough, and myall blackfellow can smell horse long way off all same horse or bullock can smell myall blackfellow long way off."
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