It will however be readily understood with what caution we followed these
natives when we discovered, almost as soon as we fell in with them, that
they were actually our old enemies from the Darling! I had certainly
heard, when still far up on the Lachlan, that these people were coming
down to fight us; but I little expected they were to be the first natives
we should meet with on the Murray, at a distance of nearly two hundred
miles from the scene of our former encounter. There was something so
false in a forced loud laugh, without any cause, which the more plausible
among them would frequently set up, that I was quite at a loss to
conceive what they meant by all this uncommon civility. In the course of
the afternoon they assembled their women and children in groups before
our camp, exactly as they had formerly done on the Darling; and one or
two small parties came in, whose arrival they seemed to watch with
particular attention, hailing them while still at a distance as if to
prevent mistakes. We now ascertained through Piper that the tribe had
fled precipitately from the Darling last year to the country westward,
and did not return until last summer, when they found the two bullocks we
left there; which, having become fat, they had killed and eaten. We also
ascertained that some of the natives then in the camp wore the teeth of
the slaughtered animals, and that they had much trouble in killing one of
them, as it was remarkably fierce. This we knew so well to the character
of one of the animals that we had always supposed it would baffle every
attempt of these savages to take it.

In the group before me were pointed out two daughters of the gin which
had been killed, also a little boy, a son. The girls exactly resembled
each other and reminded me of the mother. The youngest was the handsomest
female I had ever seen amongst the natives. She was so far from black
that the red colour was very apparent in her cheeks. She sat before me in
a corner of the group, nearly in the attitude of Mr. Bailey's fine statue
of Eve at the fountain; and apparently equally unconscious that she was
naked. As I looked upon her for a moment, while deeply regretting the
fate of her mother, the chief who stood by, and whose hand had more than
once been laid upon my cap, as if to feel whether it were proof against
the blow of a waddy, begged me to accept her in exchange for a tomahawk!

HARASSING NIGHT IN THEIR PRESENCE.

The evening was on