I Had A Black Boy Named Billy, And We Had Twelve Camels.

I approached the Everard Range from the south-westward, having found a good watering-place, which I called Verney's Wells, in that direction.

There, we met a lot of natives who did not belong to the Everard Range tribes. At Verney's Wells we had a grand corrobboree in the warm moonlight; my young men and black boy stripped themselves, and young and old, black and white, danced and yelled, and generally made the night hideous with their noise till early morning. After the ball a grand supper was laid for our exhausted blackmen and brothers. The material of this feast was hot water, flour, and sugar mixed into a consistent skilly. I had told the cook to make the gruel thick and slab, and then pour it out on sheets of bark. Our guests supplied themselves with spoons, or rather we cut them out of bark for them, and they helped themselves ad lib. A dozen pounds of flour sufficed to feed a whole multitude. We left Verney's Wells and made up to the well in the Ferdinand that I have just mentioned. This we opened out with shovels, and found a very good supply of water. From thence we proceeded to my old dinner-camp at the range, where, as I said before, the whole space about, was filled up with fig-trees. Almost immediately upon our appearance, we heard the calls and cries and saw the signal smokes, of the natives.

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