"There are too few of us to fight," answered Rough-and-Ready. "We might frighten them for a time, but they would be sure to come back in larger numbers. Then we haven't too much powder and shot left. No; the best and wisest course will be to be friendly with them, if possible. I _have_ heard of white men living with them for many years. I saw an Englishman myself once who had been with them for five years. He was glad enough to get away from them; but they treated him kindly, he said. One man, whom I never saw, lived with them for thirty years. His name is Buckley, and he is living now." "Do you know any thing of his story?" "I'll tell you what little I know. He was a bricklayer in Cheshire--came from Macclesfield, I've heard. A great big hulking lazy fellow he was--brick-making was too hard work for him, so he enlisted as a grenadier. A fine grenadier he must have looked--he was six feet six inches in his stockings. But grenadiering didn't satisfy his wants. He was a natural vagabond like myself, and he got into trouble, and was sentenced to transportation. So he and three or four hundred other natural and unnatural vagabonds, being deemed fine material for the purpose, were sent out to form a colony. Buckley and his mates were put ashore at Port Phillip; but the governor, whose name was Collins, liked the place as little as the convicts, and he moved them off to Van Dieman's Land. Then they began to talk of escaping. They didn't know any thing of the interior of the country; but they thought, perhaps, that any thing was better than the devil's life they led as convicts. Buckley got away with two mates, of whom nothing more was ever heard. About twelve months after he escaped, he fell in with the natives, and lived with them for more than thirty years. During the whole of that time he never saw a white man. At length he heard from the tribe he was living with, that some men with skins the same color as his had been seen within a few miles of the native camp. They belonged to a band of explorers headed by a man named Batman. Buckley went in search of them, and presented himself to them. You can imagine what a sensation he created; a white giant, who had forgotten how to speak English, with native weapons hung round his body, and a kangaroo-skin rug his only clothing. He soon picked up a bit of English, and was taken to a white settlement, where he was made a pet and a wonder of. He might have done good service for the white people with the natives, for they say he has great influence with them. But my opinion of him is, that he is a lazy, skulking thief, and that living with the savages, where he hadn't to work for his food, just suited him. I expect that some part of his influence over them was produced by his tremendous height and big limbs. However, he is among the whites again, with a free pardon granted him, I've heard, and earning his living as he has earned it all his life--by doing nothing."