from such great distances, also caused our neighbourhood to be filled with an unusual number of natives, who constantly made the nights noisy with their merriment.
Two "corobberies," as the native dances are called, I especially recollect, when a most disturbing and oft-recurring hubbub was kept up all night by the whole company, who beat and stamped upon the ground in unison, producing an amount of noise that was perfectly astounding, their bare feet and the hardness of the soil being taken into consideration. The piece, which would probably otherwise have had an indefinite run, was in its third rehearsal, when the police interrupted the performance in mercy to the white people, who had been unable to sleep during the two previous nights. We never again saw so many natives collected together at any one time, nor was it merely that they dispersed on the ceasing of the drought which had caused them to congregate around us.
During the five years which we spent in the colony, we remarked a sensible diminution by death of those natives who had been our friends, and we noticed that the fatal cases occurred amongst the young and middle-aged rather than the old. More than twenty years before, when Bishop Salvado (from whose work I have already quoted) had parted a little mob of fighting viragoes by laying his cane soundly on the shoulders of the strongest, the men, whom he reproached for standing by whilst their women were killing each other, excused themselves by saying "that there were plenty more"; other reasons would have been required for the men's neutrality at the time of our landing in Western Australia, and still more so when we left it.
