alligators and sharks had their haunts. The latter, I believed
from observations made when we bathed off the schooner, could smell a
human body in the water from a long distance. But the plain necessity was
that, for the succour of certain members of the expedition, I must swim
the lagoon.'

A nearer hazard furnished Sir George with a knowledge, which a call from
his friend Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist, enabled him to use in fun.
Lyell walked in on him, in London, with a spear-head and the curiosity,
'How old do you judge that would be?' The weapon was of stone, uncouth,
barbarous. 'A thousand years, eh?' Lyell pursued. Sir George let him go
on for a while, then broke in, 'If that's a thousand years old, I
likewise am a thousand years old, because one has been taken out of me.'
'What do you mean?' was Lyell's ejaculation. 'Oh,' said Sir George, 'a
head almost similar was on the spear which an Australian native drove
into my thigh.'

Whereupon laughter, and tale of the fight.

VI MAN AND NATURE ABORIGINAL

There never had been such a drama in that forest of North-West Australia.
The noise of the white man's war fell upon the primeval silence, breaking
it.

This battle dwelt acutely with Sir George Grey as the single occasion,
amid all his adventures, on which he had been the instrument of taking
human life. He carried his own wounds to the grave, but only sorrowed for
the bullet he sped, though sheer necessity drove it. The sacred light
might burn in a savage, ignorant of its nobler gleams, yet it was the
gift of the Creator. Moreover, Sir George's whole dealing, towards native
races, was guided by a pole-star principle. The duty civilisation owed
them, he affirmed, was the larger in proportion to their state of
darkness. He held this to be the simple rule for the Christian.

The natives of the Australian North-West were a fine race physically,
and, he judged, had an ingrain of Malay blood. 'To see one for the first
time,' said Sir George, 'produced a great effect upon you. These people
were hardly known then.' They coloured themselves in fearsome style, red
being the favourite daub. No matter, the strangers from over sea would
have greeted them gladly, being anxious to cultivate friendship. The wild
men responded not; but hovered in the distance of the bush, or peered
curiously from some covering of the rocks.

'I did everything I could,' Sir George remarked in that relation, 'to get
acquainted wit