a most wonderful hair girdle wound round and round his body, and the mode of making is by plucking the hair out of the head and weaving it into a long rope. If some hair of a dead warrior can be woven with it, so much the more brave and successful in battle does the wearer expect to become. He wears also a piece of shell behind his ear. Jack says it is an ornament only.
When Billie came up Jack asked him to read the laurie, or as Billie pronounces it lowrie. I learned last week that was also known as a talking-stick, a means of communication between the natives. Jack at same time got him to make his marks in a book we keep for putting down the native words in, and afterwards made him read what he had written. This is the translation: "By-and-by s'pose I go along country see brother and father, see mother, see my uncle, see my sister and wife" (or as he put it, store). It turned out that he has another wife "along of his country," whom his mother looks after for him.[1] The same day that he read the talking-stick, he had asked permission to go to his own country, and had arranged with two other niggers to come and take his and Maggie's place while they were away, which would be for a fortnight. Jack told him the plain was impassable owing to the rain, but he said he had had message, or Milly-Milly—"all same wood"—and that told him "all same road other side plain could go along." However, the continued stormy weather has either flooded the road or washed it away, so he has not gone yet. He wanted to go—had had message from his father. This is how he told us: "You savey my father, my father savey you, you good pfeller, my father have catchee green farret and red farret, along a bush, him wantum box, can bring um 'long a you, and a lot of other birds too." From what we could make out, a farret is a parrot. He goes alone to his own country, and while he is away Maggie goes along a bush get other pfeller nigger; it's the same with them all.
