3i6 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 

 b6che-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 



