4 88 NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



below Battle Camp and keeping the right bank of the river for 

 30 miles more, to what is called the " Lower Crossing." As we 

 had not crossed the track, we had struck the river below the lower 

 crossing. I therefore determined to run the Normanby up to the 

 lower crossing, a course which would bring me nearer the Palmer 

 road should I find it necessary to return. 



Half-a-mile above our camp there had been a NATIVE FISHING 

 STATION last wet season. The mouth of a gully (still retaining a 

 few water-holes) had been stopped by a fence of stakes and twisted 

 branches. The blacks must have got a good many large barramundi, 

 judging from the heaps of large scales lying about. Six dome-shaped 

 gunyahs, 4 feet high and 6 in diameter, were still standing. 

 They were strongly built of flakes of teatree bark, secured with 

 vines and teatree bark ropes to a framework of boughs. Every 

 cranny was carefully stopped up with straw. The access was 

 by a door 14 inches square, stopped up with a wisp of straw. 

 A heap of ashes lay inside each gunyah, opposite the door. I 

 thought the buildings were designed for smoking fish, but the boys 

 assured me that they were only for protection in the season when 

 " bigfellow rain come up." It is an undeniable fact that Queens- 

 land natives can live where white men would be suffocated. 



The next day (August 29), Brusher and Willie having been sent 

 out with a shot-gun and rifle to get game and report if they saw the 

 Coen track, were ATTACKED BY NATIVES while eating their lunch, 

 about 5 miles down the river. One spear (barbed with kangaroo 

 bone) lighted at Willie's feet, and a fishing-spear (a bamboo lance 

 with four bloodwood prongs), broke in a tree above his head. The 

 boys saw five natives in all, two of whom they shot dead one of 

 them while in the act of aiming a spear. The rest fled. Such, at 

 least, was the boys' story, and I faded to shake it in any essential 

 point by a long cross-examination. They brought home two spears 

 in support of the story. I regret the circumstance, as I hoped to 

 accomplish my peaceful mission without bloodshed ; but I could 

 not blame the boys for doing what I should have done myself 

 had I been attacked. 



In view of possible retaliation we kept a watch all night. It 

 was clear moonlight, and it would have been easy for the natives to 

 track the boys to the camp and treat us to a camisade. I did not 

 doubt our joint ability to defend ourselves, but what was to prevent 

 the natives wreaking their revenge (as is their custom) on the 

 horses feeding out of our sight ? Brusher insisted that the blacks 

 would not start in pursuit till they had eaten the last of their two 

 friends. We were not disturbed, which gives a colour to this theory, 

 but my mind was not so easy as Brusher's. The boys, who do not 

 usually watch with a good grace, were on the alert all night, even 

 when " their watch was below " a circumstance which, I think, 

 corroborates their story to some extent. 



