We were beginning to know something of the language. There was a palaver every night, or, to speak more exactly, there were several palavers, in one of which we always joined, with Gioro for interpreter. And on several occasions Bomero harangued the tribe. These harangues were very interesting, even before we could understand any part of them or before Gioro explained a word of them. The manner and mode of delivery were very remarkable. Bomero was highly demonstrative, but he was never carried away by his own eloquence. The spirit of the prophet was always subject to the prophet. He could pull himself together in a moment and be as cool as you please. The matter of his harangues was chiefly the greatness of his tribe, and above all of the king of the tribe, the king’s ability to guide his people to food and water, to beat any two or three men of his own tribe, and as many as you like of any other tribe, the great Corrobboree that they were going to keep out away west, and the greatness of the tribes who kept it, of which tribes they were the greatest, and Bomero was the greatest of them. These harangues were his method, it seemed, of keeping up his influence over his people in time of peace. And one could not but liken him, as Carlyle says, to “certain completed professors of parliamentary eloquence” nearer home. The Pleiades were now seen to be setting earlier and earlier every evening. They were for a few nights obscured by clouds, and the next time they appeared they were perceptibly nearer the sun. This fact was observed at once and they hailed it with what at first seemed to be a series of shouts, but which proved to be a sort of barbaric chant, each stave of which ended with this refrain:— “Go, go, Red star and little stars.” And this was a chant as Gioro told us (and Bomero confirmed him) which their fathers and their fathers’ fathers had sung before them from time immemorial. I wish that some of our savants would investigate this matter, for I cannot but think that this festival and its obvious connection with the constellation Taurus would throw some important light on the origin of these people and their connection with the other races of mankind.