316 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



"YANKEE CHARLEY" 



At rare intervals one finds a black who knows how to 

 drive a bargain. " Yankee Charley " came, badly wanting 

 a shirt. The only one available was valued at 2s. 6d., and 

 Charley produced 2s., protesting that that represented his 

 total capital, the extreme limit of his financial resources 

 his uttermost farthing, as it were. At that sum the Boss 

 disposed of the shirt, for the need of the stranger within his 

 gates threatened to become shocking, as " Yankee Charley " 

 possessed few of the " artificial contrivances that hold society 

 together." Retiring to the scrub, Charley took off his 

 ruined singlet, came back smiling in his new shirt, and with 

 delightful candour tendered 6d. for a flash handkerchief. 

 He got it for his smartness. 



MYALL'S BAKING 



When blacks are introduced to the ways of white men, 

 singular, often grotesque episodes occur. A big, shy, 

 clumsy fellow endeavouring to put on a shirt as a pair of 

 "combinations" does cut an absurd figure, and the first 

 efforts of many meddling and unskilled cooks to make a 

 " damper " are often pathetic failures. Not long since a 

 beche-de-mer fisherman engaged a crew from the table- 

 lands at the back of Princess Charlotte Bay. Never 

 having been on board a schooner before, and being 

 absolutely innocent of the ways of the whites, they found 

 " damper " unpalatable, and flour was given them that they 

 might prepare it after their own methods. Some nuts 

 ("koie-ie," Cryptocaria Palmerstoni, for example) blacks 

 toast until the shell (impregnated with resin) starts into a 

 blaze and the kernel falls out. The kernels are then 

 chewed and ejected until sufficient dough is available for 

 a cake, which is flattened out between green leaves and 

 toasted. The dough "rises" as though leavened with 

 yeast, but this lightness is considered a fault, for the dough 



