Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 1Grey, George
History
Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 1
Grey, George
Natural history -- Australia -- Western Australia; Western Australia -- Discovery and exploration
The horses were scarcely tethered and our fire made when four more
natives joined the party; their names were Noogongoo, Kurral, Jeebar, and
Dudemurry; they brought us a present of twenty-seven freshwater
tortoises, the average weight of each of which was half a pound. They
said that, although the lake was called Mooloore, the name of the land we
were sitting on was Doondalup.
STORY-TELLING.
As soon as supper was finished they became very talkative, and, in a sort
of recitative, recounted various adventures; and, when they conceived
that they had sufficiently entertained me, they requested me to give them
an account of my adventures in the northern part of the country, where
they had heard from other natives that I had been for some time.
Having now acquired some knowledge of their language, I was able to make
myself tolerably intelligible to them, and they listened with the
greatest anxiety and interest to the various misfortunes that befel me.
When they heard that I had been wounded by the natives to the north no
persuasions or protestations upon my part could convince them that my
object in now proceeding in that direction again was merely to gratify
curiosity, and not from motives of revenge; but they kept continually
requesting me not to attempt to kill anybody until I had passed a spot
named Yalgarrin, about ten days journey to the north, and they then
advised me indiscriminately to shoot everybody I saw; and were the more
urgent in pressing the adoption of this course upon me from the fact of a
quarrel existing between some of their relatives and the tribe dwelling
there.
After I had exhausted the theme of my northern journey they desired me to
give them some information with regard to England; I therefore related
various circumstances which I thought would amuse them. Amongst other
things I described the track of the sun in the heavens in those northern
latitudes; this they fully understood, and it excited their most
unqualified admiration. I now spoke to them of still more northern
latitudes; and went so far as to describe those countries in which the
sun never sets at a certain period of the year.
ITS IMPRESSION ON THE NATIVES.
Their astonishment now knew no bounds: "Ah I that must be another sun;
not the same as the one we see here," said an old man; and in spite of
all my arguments to the contrary, the others adopted this opinion. I
wound up the night's conversation by an account of the diminutive
Laplanders, clothed in skins of the seal instead of kangaroo; and amidst
the shouts of applause that this account excited I laid down to rest. I
this night observed a circumstance which had often before struck me,
namely, that savages care but little for narratives concerning civilized
man, but that anything connected with other races in the same state is
most greedily received by them.
December 1.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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