A Coolgardie Experience.

Manawatu Herald, 12 March 1895, Page 3

A Coolgardie Experience.

0 A writer in the Adelaide Standard givea the following Coolgardie extraordinary experience :— "As I have often told you, the "Western Australian nigger is no •beauty, neither is he of much use, but he has one redeeming feature, he can find water in places that no white man would ever dream of searching for it ; but the fellows who hang around camps are not of much real service. The wild tribe the J^acfc country are the useful animals* Jout it is no easy matter to get one-of those savages to point out a ' soak ' to a white fellow. They will take all the damper, tobacco, and tinned camel you care to give them, or that they can steal, and they will readily promise to find • plenty gabbing. 1 , As you know 'gabbing' means water in their ■1 Jiquid language, which is about as 'sweet to listen to as their faces are to look upon. But after fooling you round the bush, until they know by the gleam in your eye that you won't Btand them any longer, they suddenly disappear in the bush, and it ia^not a healthy sort of amusement huntinrfj*pßtUem when they once get a gowTstart in that forest. The SrospeetWsV out back give them a ay oratwo to find water; if they do not find it then they tie the nigger to a tree and keep him there until he is as dry as the inside of an oyster shell. Then they let him go and follow him. As a rule the coon makes a straight dive for the nearest water. They say that the men of their tribe will kill any savaga who gives up the secret of these precious water holes. " Away beyond Idgery a couple of prospectors— one of whom is a well** known Adelaide boy— got clean out of water, and they feared that they bad looked their last on the City of Churches, for they were too far out to hope to get back to any civilised camp before death would put in his claim. "As they lay dreaming at the flush of dawn a footfall soft as the caress of a snowflake on a seam of soot, broke the death-like stillness, a twig broke, and then a sable warrior and his gin glided into the white man's camp, and silently as ghosts began to loot it. Had the whites been sleeping they would never have heard the stealthy marauders. The diggers lay still and waited for a chance to spring. The chance came, and the Adelaide man wound his arms around the skinny legs of the warrior. The gin got away and the • buck ' kicked and bit and fought, and got half strangled for his pains. y " Then he was fed on dry damper and salt fish, and tied to a tree until morning. At daylight he go! another ample feed— salt bacon this time — and was asked how far it was from the nearest water-hole. He could «talk a mixture of English and nigger dialect, and this is what hi Baid :— ; Gindah get up, white pellow walka-walka-walka, gindah tumble, down, white fellow sit down, sleep, make 'm plenty plour; ginv dan get up, white pellow walka« walka-walka, gindah tumble down, white pellow sit down, sleep, make 'm plenty plour ; gindah get up, white l " fellow walka-walka-walka gindah tumble down, white pellow get gabbing. 1 This being interpreted'meant that the nearest watei was three days travel from that spot, The wWteTwouW have to be on the move from sunrise to sunset. Gindab means tfee sun ; when gindat tumble* down it is sundown ; white fellow sit down means camp foi night. "The witnesses did not believe that tale, and they gave the darkfc

; to understand unmistakably that t they doubted his veracity, but he . refused to budge an inch, and they [ soon saw that he had realised that i they were far more in need of water > than he was, and had made up hie r mitid to sit the show otit. s "At midday they shifted him • from the ihade of the tree and ! turned his face towards the sun and r left him to think things over, bound . hand and foot to quicken his mental i faculties. At sunrise next morning ; he Was as obstinate as formerly * atid I they were half craay from thirst, ) but they dimly understood his little I game. His gin had gone off for » help to her tribe, and trouble was , looming up for tbem. s " Then they opened his mouth i and stuffed it half full of salt, and , propped his teeth apart with a slick, i He stood that for three mortal hours i in the sun whilst they stood re s volvors in hand, waiting in the i shade watching for the tribe. At • last the nigger came to the con* , elusion that he had better give in or f be pickled, and he murmured huskily ■ through his baked lips, 'Me find i 'm gabby.' Then they tied his > hands behind his back, hobbled him I with a robe so that he could walk but not run, covered him with their revolvers, and invited him to proceed ; and he did, and at sundown ! they were quenching their thirst at a , good soak, and the black drank like a camel after thirty days' abstinence."