Robert Potter

“ I took a second class in classics, bade adieu to Oxford, and began to make up my mind as to what I should do with my life. I had thought of the various professions in turn, and had decided against them all; and, finally, as I had no taste for idleness, and as I had some money, I resolved to invest it in sheep or cattle farming in some of the new countries. I thought successively of New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and Australia, and I was determined in favour of Australia by falling in with Jack Wilbraham. ”

“ I don't believe that there are any men as bad as that, and if there were, I should call them devils and hunt them down like mad dogs.
Leopold. I don't wish to use misleading words, but I will say that I believe there are intelligences, not human, who have access to realms of nature that we are but just beginning to explore; and I believe that some of them are enemies to humanity, and that they use their knowledge to breed such things as malignant small-pox or the red sickness out of germs which were originally of a harmless or even of a beneficent nature. ”

“ Fetherston about our purpose of going westward with Gioro. He shook his head very gravely. "Well, Easterley," said he, "if you will be guided by me you will do nothing of the sort. You see we know next to nothing of those north-west blacks, and if you go it is even betting that you never come back. If you get, say, a hundred miles west of here you will be entirely dependent on the blacks. You will have to live among them, and to live as they live, if they let you live at all." ”

“ Fetherston. I am afraid I must ask you to explain your explanation.
Easterley. What I mean is this. I believe that there is nothing at all, from a bucket of saltwater to the head on your shoulders, of which a full account can be given by any man. You go further and further back until you can get no further, but still you see that you are not at the end. Every natural thing implies a principle which is outside nature.
Fetherston. But you believe that there is a law for everything? ”

“ He won't understand your anxiety to get away; he will think you are very well as you are. His interest in his own people will make him careless about you."
"But I know Gioro well, and I should trust him anywhere." So said I, and Jack eagerly agreed with me.
"But," said Mr. Fetherston, "Gioro may die or may be killed; they fight a great deal, and those who have been among white men are often subject to special enmity."
"I expect we shall have to chance that," said Jack. "Any of us may die or be killed." ”

“ They can only have nature to work upon. And very likely their only advantage over us is that they know more of nature than we do. They cannot go beyond the limits of nature to do less or more. As long as we sought after spells and enchantments and that sort of nonsense we were very much at their mercy. But we are now learning to fight them with their own weapons, which consist of the knowledge of nature. Witness vaccination, and witness also our little victory over the red sickness. ”

“ I went in due course to Oxford, where I stayed the usual time. I did not make any great failures there, nor did I gain much distinction. I was a diligent reader, but much of my reading was outside the regulation lines. The literature of my own country, the poetry of mediæval Italy, and the philosophy of modern Germany, more than divided my attention with classics and mathematics. Novels, mostly of the sensational type, amused me in vacations and on holidays, but very seldom found their way into my working days. ”

“ Then I turned round and looked Jack in the face and said, "Why, man, it must have been quite near the place."
"No," said he, "it may have been fifty miles or more away, their knowledge is loose, and their description looser, but it must be somewhere in the neighbourhood, and I suppose they are sure to find it."
"I do not know," said I; and after a pause I added, "Jack, it seems to me they might pass all over the place and see nothing of what we saw."
"God knows," he muttered, and then he sat down on a hummock of sand and I beside him. Then he said, "Why have you never told the story, Bob?" ”

“ So when we sat down to smoke, Gioro, Jack and I, Gioro said, "Way there," pointing to the north-east after looking at the stars, "two three white men, sheep, two three, two three, two three, great many; one man not white man, not black man, pigtail man, and Gioro." ”

“ Then I say that if there be ghosts they are part of nature; they have their place in nature as well as we. And we as well as the ghosts, and the air and the water as well as we, imply something that is not nature. Everything is natural and everything is supernatural.
Fetherston. Easterly, I am afraid you are a philosopher. Come with me to Central Australia and we'll knock the philosophy out of you and make you a practical man. ”

“ Sooner or later they always kill the blacks that have been among white men."
"And then," struck in Jack, "I suppose they will kill us."
"They may and they may not. You have ten times a better chance that Gioro. But if they don't you will be as good as their slaves for life. You won't be able to get back unless they take you back, and they will never take you back." ”

“ You think, then, that there is a secret guild of malignant men of medicine sworn to wage war against their fellow-men, that they are spread over all the world and have existed since before the dawn of history. ”

“ Our dogs are all more or less like Tommy here, gentle and faithful, very intelligent, and by no means deficient in pluck. My cousin's dogs are fierce and quarrelsome, so much so that they have not been suffered for generations to associate with children. And so they have lost intelligence and are become ill-conditioned and low-lived brutes.
Leopold. But I think I understood you to say that the change in the breed did not come about in the ordinary course of nature. ”

“ The cause of this change was evidently something that had happened in the far west; some encounter with white men as Jack and I thought at first. But we had reason afterwards, as you will hear, to think that we were mistaken.
One evening I said to Gioro, "When did you see your people last?" He looked at the stars, and I knew he was going to be exact. Then he said, "One year."
"Did you tell Bomero then about the white men?"
"Yes, tell Bomero. Bomero never see white man."
"What did Bomero say?"
"Bomero say, white man all same dibble dibble." ”

“ By the time they commenced operations there were three or four more cases in the valley, and one more in the second cottage on the Penruddock side. There was a large stone house, partly ruinous, in the valley, near the sea, and hither they brought every one of the sick. Plenty of help was given them in the way of beds, bedding, and all sorts of material, but such was the height which the panic had now attained that no one from the village would go near any of the sick folk, nor even enter the valley. ”

“ When the story was told, Mr. Fetherston gave his opinion of it very freely. I never saw contempt more effectually expressed. He spoke without the least atom of temper. Men who get angry and denounce that sort of thing are usually afraid of believing it, or at least of seeming to believe it. Nothing was further from Mr. Fetherston's thought. ”

“ It was our custom to be out all day, but home early and early to bed. We used to take our meals in a low long room which was well aired but poorly lighted, whether by day or night. And here, when tea was over and the womenkind had retired, we smoked, whenever, as often happened, the evening was cold enough to make a shelter desirable ”

“ Fetherston introduced us to his chief assistant, Mr. Berry, telling us that we could do no better than take his advice about our preparation for the journey. Mr. Berry was also a veteran bushman and an experienced surveyor. He had been to Cooper's Creek twice, and he knew the Darling from Bourke to Wentworth as well as King William Street and the North Terrace. So Jack and I put ourselves into his hands. We purchased two strong saddle horses, each with colonial saddles of the sort used by stockmen, and everything to match. We hired a man, specially recommended as a good bushman by Mr. Berry. ”

“ Then there had been no new cases for four days, but on the fifth day a new case appeared in the cottage just over the brow of the hill. And when this became known, also that every case (there had now been eleven) had hitherto been fatal, serious alarm arose. Then, too, the disease became known as the "red sickness." ”

“ A farmer who lived about twelve miles from Bristol left home one evening with the intention of spending the night in that city in order to transact some business there at an early hour in the morning. ”

“ Mr. Berry, with the horses and waggons, left Adelaide within a week of our arrival here. Mr. Fetherston, Jack, and I, remained a week or ten days longer. It was arranged that we should join them at Port Augusta, whence the real start would be made. Most of the time thus gained Jack and I spent in trying to make ourselves as well acquainted as possible with the route we were to travel by, and its position with reference to the other parts of Australia. ”

“ Because it's easy enough to travel with the blacks, easy enough for men of your sort, men that are hardy and are up to larks. The blacks know how to get food and water and fire, and you can live while in their company. ”

“ Fetherston, my friend Wilbraham and I are going to leave you for a few days at least. We propose to go westward with Sir Gioro, in order to see something of the aborigines. We may be back within a week, but we may push on with the blacks into the interior, and perhaps we may make for the north-west or west coast. ”

“ The first case occurred in a valley about two miles from the village. In this valley there were several cottages inhabited mostly by farm labourers and artisans. These cottages lay one after another in the direction of the rising ground which separated the valley from Penruddock. Then there were no houses for a considerable space. Then, just over the hill, there was another and yet another. The disease had made its way gradually up the hill from one cottage to another, day after day a fresh case appearing. ”

“ As a general rule (and I have only known the one exception) , they have no really great qualities, none of those which are sometimes attributed to other barbarous races, as, for instance, to the American red man and even to the negro. ”

“ There was one such story which was constantly reproduced under various forms. Sometimes it was said to have happened in the last generation; sometimes as far back as the civil wars, of which, strange to say, a lively traditional recollection still remained in the neighbourhood ”