16 



Still, as I shall show, some evidence of this kind is 

 fortunately yet available. Mr. Bott, whose long residence 

 of thirty years at Swanport has been mentioned, informs mo 

 that in his early days three old blaeks were living in the 

 distriet, viz., Billy Poole, Jimmy Giles, and Jimmy Duck. 

 Their names are still well remembered by old colonists. Billy 

 Poole was the eldest of the three and was, at the time of 

 which Mr. Bott speaks -that is, about 1880 or I SSI pro 

 bably seventy years of age. Assuming this estimate of age 

 to be correct Billy Poole's personal recollections might have 

 gone back to about the year 1815. These old blacks, Mr. 

 Bott told me, often spoke to him about a, great sickness 

 which, when they were quite young, fell upon the natives 

 along the river, causing their deaths in sneh numbers and 

 with such rapidity that the living were a.t their wits' end to 

 know how to dispose of the dead quickly enough ; and they 

 also described how in the sickness they came out, all over 

 spots and quickly died, the rapid onset of decomposition after 

 death, and their unavailing efforts to find an effective remedy 

 among the plants of the scrub.' 6 ) 



This evidence does not enable us to fix the time of the 

 occurrence, except to the extent that it wa.s certainly before 

 the coming of the white man as a permanent settler. 



There is still alive and in full possession of all her 

 faculties an unusually intelligent old woman of the Narrin- 

 yeri tribe, well known to all the inhabitants of the Lake 

 Districts, who has often told me an unvarying story of her 

 first sight, of the white people. It occurred to me that she 

 might have sonic recollection of the great sickness, and 

 accordingly 1 sought an interview with her at Wellington 

 West, on May '21. She had been camping on Poltalloch Sta- 

 tion, on the south side of Lake A l< sxand pi na, bu1 she readily 

 came to the place mentioned when told that I wished to 

 sec her. 



This old black's married name, under which she is gener- 

 ally known, is Mrs. Karpeny,' " or Louisa Karpeny (plates 



vi., vii., viii.), but her own proper name is Kbntinyeri (the. 

 exact vowel sound of the first syllable being represented by 



the German modified o). She has, or has had, two sons 



and six daughters and twenty-eight grandchildren. She 



spends her life wandering from place to place along t he shores 



(6) Or, as Billy expressed it, "Long time ;i<.m> big one sich : big 

 one tumble down all aboul 'long river \ die very quick; can't bury 

 quick enough: big; one very quick stink, blackfellow big one 

 Frightened ; all run away." 



a) In the pronunciation of this name the accent is upon the 

 first syllable and the second is short. 



