It Is Marvellous How Soon A Tame Boy Comes To Despise His Own People, When He Far Outstrips Any White Man In His Contemptuous Manner Of Speaking About A " - - Black Fella."

One visitor to Bayley's Reward Claim, brought with him from Victoria, a highly educated aboriginal who had been born in civilisation, and who afterwards married his master's parlourmaid.

Jim was a tremendously smart boy, could ride, shoot, box, bowl, or keep wicket against most white men, and any reference to his colour or family was deeply resented. On his first appearance the cook at Bayley's (the wife of one of the miners) proceeded to converse with him in the sort of pigeon-English commonly used, and handed him a plate of scraps for his dinner, calling out, "Hi, Jacky-Jacky, this one your tucker," to which Jim replied with stern dignity, "Who the h - - are you calling Jacky-Jacky? Do you think I'm a - - black-fellow?" The cook, a quiet and ladylike little woman, who had been a schoolmistress "at home" was not less astounded by the excellent English, than by the delicate way in which his disapprobation was expressed. This story of Jim reminds me of one about his master. He was a man who liked to have everything about him smart and showy, and was quite willing that every one should look upon him as a tremendous swell with the purse of a Croesus. I heard some diggers discussing him: one said he had come to buy up all the mines in the place and must be a man of importance.

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