The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-10-04

| NPSAA lilJ ioltbs
 When we landed, nearly all the mem- bers of the tribe and many individuals from other tribes were gathered to see the first white man they had ever be- ! held. They were not so much sur | pirsed, however, at my personal appear ance as at the form of my footprints, which differed very greatly from theirs, and the few articles possessed filled them with amazement, especially my boat. This boat, which l built on the island from the wreck, and in which reached the mainland with the party of natives, was, unfortunately, lost in an encounter with whale, and with it | disappeared my hopes of reaching Som | erset, at Cape York, a settlement of l which l had often heard the pearlers speak. Thus I was obliged to make the attempt by land, and I started with my wife about October, 1867, intending to travel due east to the Queensland coast. After six or seven months travelling, at first over fiat coast land diversified by | isolated hills, and then through an ele- Vated and very broken country, reached a desolate and waterless re- zion covered with spinifex, where we both suffered terribly from thirst, and but for the skill of my native wife in finding water and procuring food I should probably never have come through it.
 We soon found that we had come con- siderably further south than we intend ed, and so we struck due north and | eventually reached a flooded river flow ing eastward, which presently led us to the sea. This river was probably the Ropa, entering the Gulf of Carpentaria, but as I did not know of the existence of such a gulf I believed we had reached the Queensland coast, and I at once in | quired of the tribes we met for the 1 nearest settlement of white men. These natives were the most savage and 1 hostile I ever encountered in all my Wanderings. They attacked at night. | but, having been warned by my native | wife we retired from our gunyah, or shelter of boughs, and slept in the bush | without fire. In the morning wewould | find our shelter riddled with spears.
 At length, after several months of coasting, we found the land trending to | the west; and here, at Raffle Bay prob ably we found a Malay proa. We landed on the northern coast of Mel 1 vile Island, and after we had again reached the coast of the mainland through Apsley Strait, we experienced terrible storm, which must have driven us past Port Darwin. For whole nights my native wife and I would be inn mersed in the sea, clinging on to the l gunwale of our frailcraft. At last, about eighteen months after we had left my wife's home in the Cambridge | Cy,If 11-an ronno,oi1ad ppr. tain islands and also the coast, and soon afterward we found ourselves, to my great surprise, at the very spot from which we had started
 The next attempt made was to the southwest, starting after some months | of rest, and coasting in the dugout as far as King Sound. I landed upon and explored many of the islands dotted along that extensive stretch of coast, and in some of them I found caves with l rude drawings on the rocks. On what was probably Bigge's Island found a | cairn of stones, which I readily saw must have been the handiwork of a ! white man. We returned to the old | camp overland, crossing the King Leo- pold ranges, which were finely wooded, and appeared to be largely composed of granite.
 We next struck what was probably l the Orde river, which we followed down to Cambridge Gulf, and returned along | the coast to our own home. On return ing from this journey I felt little inch- nation to make another attempt, and l for three years I lived among the na- tives, becoming accustomed to the life | and finding it not disagreeable The desire to reach civilization returned, and about the year 1873 I started with my wife, resolving this time to cross 1 the continent to the south, as I knew | in vague kind of way that there were l great towns on the coast somewhere to | the south. I had only the very haZiest | idea, however of their position. The | tribes were very numerous, and alto- gether it was very thickly populated. I travelled due south, but I found it expe- difious to go from tribe to tribe and l from waterho1e to waterhole. Besides having my native wife with me, I was armed with a certain mystic message stick and, best of all. I had the power of amusing the tribes by means of aero batic performances, my steel weapons and the bark of my dog, who could also go through little performance on his own account, dancing to the tune of my reed whistle. I emphasize these things because they saved my life over and over again.
 When we were perhaps seven months out we came suddenly upon four white | men. At this time we were with a small party of blacks, who were on a | punitive expedition. The party had al- ready been attacked by the same white men and had retaliated, and, therefore, they were by no means disposed to be friendly. Naturally, in the excitement of the moment, forgot that I was vir- tually a black man myself, and rushed upon them, but they promptly fired upon us and retreated. I now know | them to have been the Giles expedition l of 1874. I should point out that I was perfectly naked, like the savages, and i was anointed with the same protective covering of black greasy clay which is used by the natives to ward off cold and the attacks of insects, but apart from | this, the sun had long since tanned my skin out of all resemblance to Euro pean. Repulsed in this way more than once, I despaired of ever making my real character known. Two or three | weeks after the encounter my wife came upon the tracks of a man whom she described as white man, and as