calabashes, on which to beat time. Some thirty of the men then stood up,
armed with spears, tomahawks, nullah-nullahs (war-clubs), and boomerangs,
and commenced a series of ludicrous antics, to a most melancholy dirge
chanted by the women, a kind of rude time being observed. Gradually,
however, they grew excited, and worked themselves up by going through a
sort of mock fight; and when at the last the women danced round them with
torches, all howling and shrieking at the top of their voices, and banging
the calabashes with kangaroo bones or anything that would add to the noise,
the whole scene reminded one of the infernal regions broken loose. This
lasted an hour, at the end of which time we withdrew, after expressing
ourselves highly gratified, and the whole camp was shortly buried in
repose. We kept double sentries, but we might all have gone to sleep, for
there was no symptom of treachery. At daylight we had breakfast; gave the
warriors and gins a few trifling things we could spare, such as knives, two
or three blankets -- for we hoped to reach the township that night -- and,
wonder of wonders to the savages, some matches (nearly all of which they
expended in verifying the fact that they would go off), and then took our
departure from the "bora ground," guided by a native, who showed a very
short way, unknown to Lizzie, by which we arrived at the 'Daylight' early
in the afternoon, to find that the latter had been joined by the 'Black
Prince', the steamer that had brought up the Cleveland Bay party. We
quitted in our little craft for Cardwell, and the Townsville men went south
in their steamer, intending to get some shooting at the Palm Islands before
going home for good. Eleven o'clock that evening saw us at our township,
fully determined to carry out the work thoroughly by searching the
Macalister River, an account of which I hope to give in a future chapter.



AN AUSTRALIAN SEARCH PARTY -- V.