ain it, she thought at first I was
joking. Indeed, the thing amused her ever after, as it did the rest of
my people. I might also mention that up in the then little-known
Kimberley district, many of the natives weighted their spears with pure
gold. I must not omit to mention that natives never poison their spear-
heads. I only found the nuggets, big and little, near the creeks during
and after heavy rains; and I might mention that having with some
difficulty interested Yamba in the subject, she was always on the look-
out for the tell-tale specks and gleams. In some of the ranges, too, I
found the opal in large and small quantities, but soon discovered that
the material was too light and brittle for spear-heads, to which curious
use I essayed to put this beautiful stone. Talking about spear-heads, in
the ranges where I met Jacky Jacky there was a quarry of that kind of
stone which was used for the making of war and other implements. It was
very much worked, and as you may suppose was a valuable possession to the
tribe in whose territory it was situated. The stone was a kind of flint,
extremely hard and capable of being made very sharp, and retaining its
edge. Natives from far and near came to barter for the stone with
shells, and ornaments which these inland tribes did not possess. The
method of getting out the stone was by building fires over it, and then
when it had become red-hot throwing large and small quantities of water
upon it in an amazingly dexterous way. The stone would immediately be
split and riven exactly in the manner required.

My very first discovery of gold was made in some crevices near a big
creek, which had cut its way through deep layers of conglomerate hundreds
of feet thick. This country was an elevated plateau, intersected by
deeply cut creeks, which had left the various strata quite bare, with
curious concave recesses in which the natives took shelter during the wet
season. One of the nuggets I picked up in the creek I have just
mentioned weighed several pounds, and was three or four inches long; it
was rather more than an inch in thickness. This nugget I placed on a
block of wood and beat out with a stone, until I could twist it easily
with my fingers, when I fashioned it into a fillet as an ornament for
Yamba's hair. This she continued to wear for many years afterwards, but
the rude golden bracelets and anklets I also made for her she gave away
to the first children we met.

I