CHARACTER. 
213 
hundred or two hundred natives advancing in line 
to meet you, unarmed, shouting and waving green 
boughs in both hands, men, women, and children, 
the old and the young, all joining in expressing their 
good feelings and pacific intentions. On such occa- 
sions I have been often astonished at the facility with 
which large bodies, have by a little kindness and 
forbearance been managed, and kept from being 
troublesome or annoying, by a party of only six or 
seven Europeans. I have occasionally had upwards 
of 150 natives sitting in a long line, where I placed 
them, and as orderly and obedient almost as a file of 
soldiers. 
At other times, when riding with only a native 
boy over the plains of the interior, I have seen the 
blue smoke of the native fires, curling up through 
the distant line of trees, which marked some yet 
unvisited watercourse, and upon making towards it, 
have come suddenly upon a party encamped in the 
hollow, beneath the banks upon which I stood. 
Here I have remained, observing them for a few 
moments, unseen and unthought of. A single call 
would arouse their attention, and as they looked up, 
would draw from them a wild exclamation of dis- 
may, accompanied by a look of indescribable horror 
and affright, at beholding the strange, and to them 
incomprehensible beings who stood before them. 
Weapons would hastily be seized, baggage gathered 
up, and the party so lately buried in repose and 
security, would at once be ready either to fight or to 
