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 this book may be a bit more uncomfortable than Book 1. Stay with the discomfort if

iban moved into th

 wooden huts, each with a fireplace, a bed, a spring-mattress, warm cosy blankets and even crockery. There was a well in the centre of the reserve which was fenced into individual areas that they might grow flowers and vegetables and keep goats. The natives were intensely proud and even jealous of their little villas and built themselves mias (bush shelters) outside them, where they slept with the dogs. They broke through the fences for a shorter route when they went to visit each other. Every now and then, those who were able wandered restlessly away to their own kalleep (group area and “home” land), in the seasons of its fruitfulness and old-time ceremonies, a

 in this room at the present moment who is not a hardened criminal in every sense of the word. The fellow at the end narrowly escaped the gallows, the man on his right has but lately emerged from seven years’ penal servitude for burgpen any of the morning papers which were lying in a heap upon the library table. At half-past ten I said good-bye to Valerie, who was practising in the drawing-room — Pharos I had not yet seen — and, putting on my hat, left the house. It was the first opportunity I had had since my return to London of visiting my studio, and I was exceedingly anxious to discover how things had been progressing there during my absence. It was a lovely morning for walking, the sky being without a cloud, and the streets in consequence filled with sunshine. In the Row a considerable number of men and women were enjoying their morning canter, and nurse-maids in white dresses were to be counted by the dozen in the streets leading to the Park. At the corner of Hamilton Place a voice I recognised called to me to stop, and on turning round I found my old friend, Sir George Legrath, hastening after me.

“My dear Cyril,” he said, as he shook hands with me, “I am indeed glad to see you. I had no idea you had returned.”

“I reached London yesterday morning,” I answered, but in such a constrained voice that he must have been dense indeed if he did not see that something was amiss. “How did you know I had been away?”

“Why, my dear fellow,” he answered, “have you forgotten that I sent you a certain address in Naples? and then I called at your studio the following morning, when your man told me you were abroad. But somehow you don’t look well. I hope nothing is the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I replied, almost sharply, and for the first time in my life his presence was almost distasteful to me, though if I had been asked the reason I should have found it difficult to say why. “Sir George, when I called on you at the Museum that morning, you told me you would rather see me in my grave than connected in any way with Pharos.”

“Well?” he inquired, looking up at me with a face that had suddenly lost its usual ruddy hue. “What makes you remind me of that now?”

“Because,” I answered, “if it were not for one person’s sake I could wish that that opportunity had been vouchsafed you. I have been two months with Pharos.”

A circular tent, 14 ft. in diameter, sagging about me in the wet and ballooning in the wind, was my home for two years in that little patch of bushland bright with wild flowers, overlooking the beautiful valley of Guildford and the winding river. There by a camp-fire when the dampers were cooking, or in the winter sittin

“I am afraid that all this does not interest you,” said Leonard stiffly.

“On the contrary, Mr. Outram, it interests me very much. I am exceedingly fond of romances, and this is rather a good one.”

“As I thought; it is scarcely worth while to go on,” said Leonard again. “Well, I cannot wonder that you do not believe me.”

“Leonard,” interposed Juanna quietly, “you still have the star ruby; show it to Mr. Wallace!”

He did so, somewhat sulkily, and then, as he seemed disinclined to say anything more, Juanna took up the tale, showing in evidence of its truth the spear, the frayed rope, and the tattered white robe which she had worn in her character of Aca, and, indeed, still wore beneath poor Francisco’s cassock — for she had no other.

Mr. Wallace heard her out, then, without making any comment,

sters of the custom-house, did not then exceed 4000 chests.

The advantage of having two ports is often discussed at Trinidad. The distance of the town from Puerto de Casilda and Puerto Guaurabo is nearly equal; yet the expense of transport is greatest in the former port. The Boca del Rio Guaurabo, defended by a new battery, furnishes safe anchorage, although less sheltered than that of Puerto Casilda. Vessels that draw little water or are lightened to pass the bar, can go up the river and approach the town within a mile. The packet-boats (correos) that touch at Trinidad de Cuba prefer, i

ns; Moorangan, of Wagin’s emu; Genburdohg, of Kellerberrin’s snake people; Nyalyert, a woman of the whitebait of Pinjarra; and Ngilgi, of the kangaroo of Busselton; Kajjaman, of the edible gum; and Dool, a Nanitchmat of York. Other sad old pilgrims of the White Cockatoo and Crow came and went. The only stranger among them was Bimba, a member of one of the circumcised groups east of Kellerberrin, but nobody ever wanted to hear about his totem.

The last Perth woman, Balbuk, or Fanny Balbuk, as she was called, was a comic, if tragic, character, and a general nuisance of many years’ standing. To the end of her life she raged and stormed at the usurping of her beloved home ground. One of her favourite annoyances was to stand at the gates of Government House, reviling all who dwelt within, because the stone gates guarded by a sentry enclosed her grandmother’s burial ground. She would trail the streets shouting her curses upon them, and impose on all the members of the “first families” with whom she had played as a child. Balbuk had been born on Huirison Island at the Causeway, and from there a straight track had led to the place where once she had gather

the East, and in every place where the mind seeks amusement. A missionary, from his vocation, is not inclined to scepticism; he imprints on his memory what the natives have so often repeated to him; and, when returned to Europe, and restored to the civilized world, he finds a pleasure in creating astonishment by a recital of facts which he thinks he has collected, and by an animated description of remote things. These stories, which the Spanish colonists call tales of travellers and of monks (cuentos de viageros y frailes), increase in improbability in proportion as you increase your distance from the forests of the Orinoco, and approach the coasts inhabited by the whites. When, at Cumana, Nueva Barcelona, and other seaports which have frequent communication with the Missions, you betray any sign of incredulity, you are reduced to silence by these few words: The fathers have seen it, but far above the Great Cataracts (mas arriba de los Raudales).

On the 15th of April, we left the island of Panumana at four in the morning, two hours before sunrise. The sky was in great part obscured, and lightnings flashed over dense clouds at more than forty degrees of elevation. We were surprised at not hearing thunder; but possibly this was owing to the prodigious height of the storm? It appears to us, that in Europe the electric flashes without thunder, vaguely called heat-lightning, are seen generally nearer the horizon. Under a cloudy sky, that sent back the radiant caloric of the soil, the heat was stifling; not a breath of wind agitated the foliage of the trees. The jaguars, as usual, had crossed the arm of the Orinoco by which we were separated from the shore, and we heard their cries extremely near. During the night the Indians had advised us to quit our station in the open air, and retire to a deserted hut belonging to the conucos of the inhabitants of Atures. They had taken care to barricade the opening with planks, a precaution which seemed to us superfluous; but near the Cataracts tigers are very numerous, and two years before, in these very conucos of Panumana, an Indian returning to his hut, towards the close of the rainy season, found a tigress settled in it with her two young. These animals had inhabited the dwelling for several months; they were dislodged from it with difficulty, and it was only after an obstinate combat that the former master regained possession of his dwelling. The jaguars are fond of retiring to deserted ruins, and I believe it is more prudent in general for a solitary traveller to encamp in the open air, between two fires, than to seek shelter in uninhabited huts.

On quitting the island of Panumana, we perceived on the western bank of the river the fires of an encampment of Guahibo savages. The missionary who accompanied us caused a few musket-shots to be fired in the air, which he said would intimidate them, and shew that we were in a state to defend ourselves. The savages most likely had no canoes, and were not desirous of troubling us in the middle of the river. We passed at sunrise the mouth of the Rio Anaveni, which descends from the eastern mountains. On its banks, now deserted, Father Olmos had established, in the time of the Jesuits, a small village of Japuins or Jaruros. The heat was so excessive that we rested a long time in a woody spot, to fish with a hook and line, and it was not without some trouble that we carried away all the fish we had caught. We did not arrive till very late at the foot of the Great Cataract, in a bay called the lower harbour (puerto de abaxo); and we followed, not without difficulty, in a dark night, the narrow path that leads to the Mission of Atures, a league distant from the river. We crossed a plain covered with large blocks of granite.

The little village of San Juan Nepomuceno de los Atures was founded by the Jesuit Francisco Gonzales, in 1748. In going up the river this is the last of the Christian missions that owe their origin to the order of St. Ignatius. The more southern establishments, those of Atabapo, of Cassiquiare, and of Rio Neg

s mias (bush shelters) outside them, where they slept with the dogs. They broke through the fences for a shorter route when they went to visit each other. Every now and then, those who were able wandered restlessly away to their own kalleep (group area and “home” land), in the seasons of its fruitfulness and old-time ceremonies, and finding no friendly fires, and the houses and fences of the white man everywhere, they fled in panic back to the city to sell clothes-props or to beg, to pick up scraps of charity and vices and disease. Too often the white man’s sympathy was expressed in beer and whisky, and so they drifted in and out of gaol, and back to the reserve again.

A circular tent, 14 ft. in diameter, sagging about me in the wet and ballooning in the wind, was my home for two years in that little patch of bushland bright with wild flowers, overlooking the beautiful valley of Guildford and the winding river. There by a camp-fire when the dampers were cooking, or in the winter sitting on the ground by a fire inside their mia, I would be on duty from night till morning, collecting scraps of language, old legends, old customs, trying to conjure a nation of the past from these few and homeless derelicts, always in haste, as they died about me one by one, in fear lest I should be too late.

Dirty and degraded as they all were, they were very human. Joobaitch of the kangaroo tribe of Perth, a Wordungmat or dark-type crowman, had been born in Stirling’s time, and was the son of that Yalgunga who ceded his spring on the banks of the Swan to Lieutenant Irwin. Joobaitch, who was then nearly 50 years of age, was, a protege of Bishop Hale and at one time a native trooper. He had had contact with only the best of the white families, neither drank nor smoked, and had no affinity with the poor depraved and drink-sodden old men and women who “sat down” at Maamba.

There was Baaburgurt, blind and feeble. Once a “brother” of the Kalda (sea mullet) in the Capel River, he would sit all day long, the tears streaming from his sightless eyes, singing songs of his lost country. There were Woolberr, last of the Kuljak (black swan) of Gin Gin; Monnop, last of the dingo-totem of the Victoria Plains; Moorangan, of Wagin’s emu; Genburdohg, of Kellerberrin’s snake people; Nyalyert, a woman of the whitebait of Pinjarra; and Ngilgi, of the kangaroo of Busselton; Kajjaman, of the edible gum; and Dool, a Nanitchmat of York. Other sad old pilgrims of the White Cockatoo and Crow came and went. The only stranger among them was Bimba, a member of one of the circumcised groups east of Kellerberrin, but nobody ever wanted to hear about his totem.

The last Perth woman, Balbuk, or Fanny Balbuk, as she was called, was a comic, if tragic, character, and a general nuisance of many years’ standing. To the end of her life she raged and stormed at the usurping of her beloved home ground. One of her favourite annoyances was to stand at the gates of Government House, reviling all who dwelt within, because the stone gates guarded by a sentry enclosed her grandmother’s burial ground. She would trail the streets shouting her curses upon them, and impose on all the members of the “first families” with whom she had played as a child. Balbuk had been born on Huirison Island at the Causeway, and from there a straight track had led to the place where once she had gathered jilgies and vegetable food with the women, in the swamp where Perth railway station now stands. Through fences and over them, Balbuk took the straight track to the end. When a house was built in the way, she broke its fence-palings with her digging stick and charged up the steps and through the rooms. Time and again she was arrested, but her childhood playmates, now in high positions, would pay the fine for her, and Balbuk would be free to get drunk again, and shout scandal and maledictions from the street corners.

To the end of her life, Balbuk would not have a half-caste near the place-she said they smelt worse than the white people.

Her matrimonial lapses evoked many a delighted grin, for Balbuk had a past. A Wordungmat, or Crow, in her young days, she had attached herself to another Crow, and when his sister resented the unlawful union and fought her, Balbuk’s rage was so intense that she drove her digging stick through the woman’s body, killing her instantly. She fled from justice to the boundary of the Bibbulmun and the circumcised tribes. There she saw human meat eaten, and was offered a thigh, which she refused. Being young and fat and possibly succulent, she promptly fled back to the Victorian plains. So attractive was her personality that in the ensuing seven years, wandering from group to group, she contracted seven marriages, most of them illegal, from the aboriginal point of view, though some were celebrated in the chapel of New Norda by unwitting priests, who did not remember that they had seen her before. The fame of her fury had travelled far, and none of the New Norda natives dared to tell.

Her old crime forgotten, Balbuk at last returned to her own Perth country. Although she had broken every law of her group, she had broken none of the totem food-laws, and never failed to perform propitiatory services to the magic snake or the spirits in rocks and caves and hills. She knew every sacred totem spot, and all the devils that haunted them, from the mouth of the Swan to the ranges, and even when she was a fat old woman, and her seven husbands, and numerous lovers had long preceded her to the Bibbulmun heaven of Kur’an’nup, she assiduously avoided every “baby stone” from which a babe might come to her.

When she lay dying in her shelter at Maamba, a female kangaroo, her totem, suddenly made its appearance among the bushes some yards away. With dimmed eyes she looked upon it “My borunggur has come for me; I go now,” she said. She died a few days later in Perth Hospital. Just at the end the doctor came into the room. Balbuk recognized him. “Ninety-nine!” she hurled at him facetiously with her last breath.

Ngilgi was the rich widow of the camp. She had been born at Busselton, just at the moment when her mother was caught red-handed robbing a potato-patch, and her unexpected arrival made the potato-patch her ground thereafter, and she became an amusing protegee of the white people who owned it. A

le food with the women, in the swamp where Perth railway station now stands. Through fences and over them, Balbuk took the straight track to the end. When a house was built in the way, she broke its fence-palings with her digging stick and charged up the steps and through the rooms. Time and again she was arrested, but her childhood playmates, now in high positions, would pay the fine for her, and Balbuk would be free to get drunk again, and shout scandal and maledictions from the street corners.

To the end of her life, Balbuk would not have a half-caste near the place-she said they smelt worse than the white people.

Her matrimonial lapses evoked many a delighted grin, for Balbuk had a past. A Wordungmat, or Crow, in her young days, she had attached herself to another Crow, and when his sister resented the unlawful union and fought her, Balbuk’s rage was so intense that she drove her digging stick through the woman’s body, killing her instantly. She fled from justice to the boundary of the Bibbulmun and the circumcised tribes. There she saw human meat eaten, and was offered a thigh, which she refused. Being young and fat and possibly succulent, she promptly fled back to the Victorian plains. So attractive was her personality that in the ensuing seven years, wandering from group to group, she contracted seven marriages, most of them illegal, from the aboriginal point of view, though some were celebrated in the chapel of New Norda by unwitting priests, who did not remember that they had seen her before. The fame of her fury had travelled far, and none of the New Norda natives dared to tell.

Her old crime forgotten, Balbuk at last returned to her own Perth country. Although she had broken every law of her group, she had broken none of the totem food-laws, and never failed to perform propitiatory services to the magic snake or the spirits in rocks and caves and hills. She knew every sacred totem spot, and all the devils that haunted them, from the mouth of the Swan to the ranges, and even when she was a fat old woman, and her seven husbands, and numerous lovers had long preceded her to the Bibbulmun heaven of Kur’an’nup, she assiduously avoided every “baby stone” from which a babe might come to her.

When she lay dying in her shelter at Maamba, a female kangaroo, her totem, suddenly made its appearance among the bushes some yards away. With dimmed eyes she looked upon it “My borunggur has come for me; I go now,” she said. She died a few days later in Perth Hospital. Just at the end the doctor came into the room. Balbuk recognized him. “Ninety-nine!” she hurled at him facetiously with her last breath.

Ngilgi was the rich widow of the camp. She had been born at Busselton, just at the moment when her mother was caught red-handed robbing a potato-patch, and her unexpected arrival made the potato-patch her ground thereafter, and she became an amusing protegee of the white people who owned it. A

"No they didn't,?Rahim Khan said.

Start telling the truth now, and never stop. Begin by telling the trut

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