we were,
in the direction of the noise, which was repeated from time to time
in a very ferocious manner. On turning a sharp corner by the river,
instead of warlike warriors, we beheld about a dozen natives hauling
in the sharkline we had left baited in the water the previous evening,
with a very large shark at the end of it. Being greatly excited they
had from time to time yelled out their war-cry. We felt very foolish
at being roused from our slumbers for nothing, but still there was
some slight consolation in knowing that even the police were deceived.

Owen, the Australian, not long before had had rather an amusing,
and at the same time exciting, adventure with a large crocodile in
a swamp close to the store. He noticed it fast asleep in the swamp,
and so waded out to it through the mud, making no noise whatever. When
within a few yards of the saurian, he threw a double charge of dynamite
close up to it, and then turned to fly. He found he could not move,
but was stuck firmly in the mud. His struggles and yells for help had
meanwhile awoke the crocodile, which came for him with open jaws. It
looked as if it was a case of either being blown to pieces by the
dynamite or furnishing a meal for the crocodile.

Luckily the fuse was a long one, and the crocodile floundered about
a good deal in the mud ere it could reach him. Some friendly natives
rushed in and dragged him out just as the crocodile reached him. The
crocodile fled in one direction and the dynamite went off in another,
but Owen and the natives only just avoided the explosion.

Owen told me that there were about fifty miners in the goldfields
of the Yodda Valley, but that most of them were beginning to leave,
although there is plenty of gold to be got. The climate is a bad one,
and provisions, etc., are very dear, and so gold has to be got in
very large quantities to pay. As the miners decrease, there is bound
to be trouble with the natives, who are very treacherous. The miners,
who are nearly all Australians or New Zealanders, have generally to
work in strong bands with their rifles close at hand.

Only a short time ago the two miners, Campion and King (whom I
have elsewhere mentioned), while working in the bed of a creek,
had just traded with some apparently friendly natives for a pig and
some yams, and sat down for a smoke and a rest, thinking that the
natives had left, but these cunning cannibals were awaiting just
such an opportunity, and were lying hi