This material I reduced to a pulp, and then endeavoured to roll into sheets.
Here again, however, I had to confess failure.

I found the ordinary sheets of bark much more suitable for my purpose.
Pens I had in thousands from the quills of the wild swan and goose; and I made ink from the juice of a certain dark-coloured berry, mixed with soot, which I collected on the bottom of my gold cooking-kettle.

I also thought it advisable to make myself plates from which to eat my food--not because of any fastidiousness on my part, but from that ever-present desire to impress the blacks, which was now my strongest instinct.

In the course of my ramblings in the northern regions I came across quantities of silver-lead, which I smelted with the object of obtaining lead to beat out into plates.

I also went some hundreds of miles for the sake of getting copper, and found great quantities of ores of different kinds in the Kimberley district.
A very strange experience befell Yamba not long after I had settled down among the blacks in my mountain home; and it serves to illustrate the strictness with which the laws against poaching are observed.