He came to me from Queensland; he had visited Adelaide,
Melbourne, and Sydney, and had been with me for nearly three years,
but his fears of wild natives were terribly excited by what nearly
everybody we met said to him about them. This was not surprising, as
it was usually something to this effect, in bush parlance: "By G--,
young feller, just you look out when you get OUTSIDE! the wild blacks
will [adjective] soon cook you. They'll kill YOU first, you know--they
WILL like to cut out your kidney fat! They'll sneak on yer when yer
goes out after the horses, they'll have yer and eat yer." This being
the burden of the strain continually dinned into the boy's ears, made
him so terrified and nervous the farther we got away from
civilisation, that soon after leaving the Peake, as we were camping
one night with some bullock teams returning south, the same stories
having been told him over again, he at last made up his mind, and told
me he wanted to go back with one of the teamsters; he had hinted about
this before, and both Carmichael and Robinson seemed to be aware of
his intention. Force was useless to detain him; argument was lost on
him, and entreaty I did not attempt, so in the morning we parted.
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