138 
NATIVES BECOME UNRULY. 
myself, therefore, encouraged any cheerfulness that occa- 
sionally broke out among them, and Frazer enlivened 
them by sundry tunes that he whistled whilst employed in 
skinning birds. I am sure, no galley-slave ever took to his 
oar with more reluctance than poor Frazei'. He was inde- 
fatigable in most things, but he could not endure the oar. 
We did not fall in with any natives on the 30th, neither 
did we see those who had preceded us from the last tribe. 
On the 31st, to my mortification, the river held so much 
to the northward, that we undid almost all our southing. 
What with its regular turns, and its extensive sweeps, the 
Murray covers treble the ground, at a moderate computa- 
tion, that it would occupy in a direct course ; and we had 
a practical instance of the truth of this in the course of the 
afternoon, when we found our friends ready to introduce us 
to a large assemblage of natives. On asking them how 
they had passed us, they pointed directly east to the spot 
at which we had parted. By crossing from one angle of the 
river to the other, they had performed in little more than 
half a day, a journey which it had taken us two long days to 
accomplish. After our usual distribution of presents, we 
pushed away from the bank ; though not without some diffi- 
culty, in consequence of the obstinacy of the natives in wishing 
to detain us ; and I was exceedingly vexed to find, while we 
were yet in sight of them, that we had proceeded down a shal- 
low channel on one side of an island instead of the further 
and deeper one; so that the boat ultimately grounded. A 
crowd of the blacks rushed into the water, and surrounded us 
