You see, the natives would watch me cutting boughs with it, or procuring honey by cutting down branches with an ease that caused them to despise their own rude stone axes.
The case of treachery I have just described was not an isolated one, but I am bound to say such occurrences were rare in the interior--although more or less frequent about the western shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

At any rate, this was my experience.
During our journey from my home to the shores of the Gulf, I remember coming across a flat country from which the natives had apparently disappeared altogether.

When we did come upon them, however, in the high ground I was probably guilty of some little breach of etiquette, such as _looking_ at the women--( for many reasons I always studied the various types in a tribe)--and Yamba and I were often in peril of our lives on this account.

As a rule, however, safety lay in the fact that the natives are terribly afraid of darkness, and they believe the spirits of the dead roam abroad in the midnight hours.
Month after month we continued our progress in a southerly direction, although, as I have said before, we often turned north-east and even due west, following the valleys when stopped by the ranges--where, by the way, we usually found turkeys in great numbers.

We had water-bags made out of the skins of kangaroos and wallabies, and would camp wherever possible close to a native well, where we knew food was to be found in plenty.
At this period I noticed that the more easterly I went, the more ranges I encountered; whilst the somewhat dreary and mostly waterless lowland lay to the west.