92 REMARKS ON THE NATIVES. 
to approach close up to him ; Mr. Hume himself having 
advanced a short distance from the animals in the first 
instance. As soon as I thought the savage had suffi- 
ciently recovered from his alarm, I went up to him with a 
tomahawk, the use of which he immediately guessed. 
We now observed that the natives who had fled from the 
river, had been employed in setting a net. They had 
placed it in a semicircle, with either end to the shore, and 
rude pieces of wood were attached to it to keep the upper 
part perpendicular. Tt was in fact a sein, only that the 
materials, with the exception of the net-work, were simpler 
and rougher than cork or lead — for which last, we after- 
wards discovered stones had been substituted. 
We had on this occasion a remarkable instance of the 
docility of the natives of the interior, or of the power they 
have of subduing their apprehensions ; manifesting the op- 
posite extremes of fear and confidence. These men whom 
we had thus surprised, and who, no doubt, imagined that 
we were about to destroy them, having apparently never seen 
nor heard of white men before, must have taken us for some- 
thing preternatural ; yet from the extremity of fear that had 
prompted them to set their woods in flames, they in a brief 
space so completely subdued those fears as to approach 
the very beings who had so strongly excited their alarm. 
The savage who had been the principal actor in the scene, 
was an elderly man, rather descending to the vale of years 
than what might be strictly called aged. I know not bow 
it was, but I regarded him with peculiar interest. Mr. 
