CHAPTER XV.
Lost in the desert--Gibson's dying advice--Giles meets Gibson--A fountain in the desert--A terrible fix--Giles regains his camp--Gibson's effects--Mysterious tracks--A treasured possession--A perfect paradise--Grape vines a failure--A trained cockatoo--An extraordinary festival--My theory of the "ghosts." After the funeral his wife followed out the usual native conventions.

She covered herself with pipeclay for about one month.

She also mourned and howled for the prescribed three days, and gashed her head with stone knives, until the blood poured down her face.

Gibson's body was not buried in the earth, but embalmed with clay and leaves, and laid on a rock-shelf in a cave.
The general belief was that Gibson had merely gone back to the Spirit Land from whence he had come, and that, as he was a great and good man, he would return to earth in the form of a bird--perhaps an ibis, which was very high indeed.

I must say I never attached very much importance to what he said, even in his sane moments, because he was obviously a man of low intelligence and no culture.