Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central Australia And Overland From Adelaide To King George's Sound In The Years 1840-1: Sent By The Colonists Of South Australia By Eyre, Edward John
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I have ever found them of a lively, cheerful disposition [Note 59 at end
of para.], patiently putting up with inconveniences and privations, and
never losing that natural good temper which so strongly characterizes
them.
On the occasion of my second visit from Moorunde, to the Rufus
natives in 1841, when I had so far overcome the ill-feelings and dread,
engendered by the transactions in that quarter, in 1840, as to induce
a large body of them to accompany me back to the station, they had to
walk a distance of 150 miles, making daily the same stages that the
horses did, and unprovided with any food but what they could procure
along the road as they passed, and this from the rapidity with which
they had to travel, and the distance they had to go in a day, was
necessarily limited in quantity, and very far from sufficient to
appease even the cravings of hunger, yet tired, foot-sore, and hungry
as they were, and in company with strangers, whose countrymen had slain
them in scores, but a few months before, they were always merry at
their camps at nights, and kept singing, laughing, and joking, to a
late hour.
[Note 59: Such appears usually to be the characteristic of Nature's
children, than whom no race appears more thoroughly to enjoy life. - Vide
character of the American Indians, by Catlin, vol. 1. p. 84.]
On falling in with them in larger numbers, when I have been travelling in
the interior with my party, I have still found the same disposition to
meet me on terms of amity and kindness.
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