Jimmy Was A Very Agreeable Old Gentleman; I Could Not Keep Up A Conversation With Him, As I Knew So Few Words Of His Language, And He Knew Only About Twenty Of Mine.

It was evident he was a man of superior abilities to most of his race, and he looked like a thoroughbred, and had always been known to Mr. Richards as a proud and honourable old fellow.

He was, moreover, the father of a large family, namely five, which is probably an unprecedented number amongst the aboriginal tribes of this part of Australia, all of whom he had left behind, as well as his wife, to oblige me; and many a time he regretted this before he saw them again, and after; not from any unkindness on my part, for my readers will see we were the best of friends the whole time we were together. On this little excursion it was very amusing to watch old Jimmy on horseback, and to notice the look of blank amazement on his face when he found himself at fault amongst the sandhills; the way he excused himself for not going straight to this little spot was also very ingenuous. In the first place he said, "Not mine young fellow now; not mine like em pony" - the name for all horses at Fowler's Bay - "not mine see 'em Paring long time, only when I am boy." Whereby he intended to imply that some allowance must be made for his not going perfectly straight to the place. However, we got there all right, although I found it to be useless. When asked concerning the country to the north, he declared it was Cockata; the country to the west was also Cockata, the dreaded name of Cockata appearing to carry a nameless undefined horror with it. The term of Cockata blacks is applied by the Fowler's Bay natives to all other tribes of aboriginals in the country inland from the coast, and it seems, although when Fowler's Bay country was first settled by the whites these natives attacked and killed several of the invaders, they always lived in terror of their enemies to the north, and any atrocity that was committed by themselves, either cannibalism, theft, or murder, was always put down to the account of the Cockatas. Occasionally a mob of these wilder aboriginals would make a descent upon the quieter coast-blacks, and after a fight would carry off women and other spoils, such as opossum rugs, spears, shields, coolamins - vessels of wood or bark, like small canoes, for carrying water - and they usually killed several of the men of the conquered race. After remaining at this Paring for about an hour, we remounted our horses and returned to the camp at Youldeh. The party remained there for a few days, hoping for a change in the weather, as the heat was now very great and the country in the neighbourhood of the most forbidding and formidable nature to penetrate. It consisted of very high and scrubby red sandhills, and it was altogether so unpleasing a locality that I abandoned the idea of pushing to the north, to discover whether any other waters could be found in that direction, for the present, and postponed the attempt until I should return to this depot en route for Perth, with the whole of my new expedition - deciding to make my way now to the eastwards in order to reach Beltana by a route previously untravelled.

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