Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/133

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. 71 and customs, while I taught them many truths and exerted an influence against heathenism. During this period various circumstances occurred which I entered in my journal. Some of them are illustrative of our work. I find the following entries, which may interest the reader: — 1859. —9th November. —This morning, Peter, the chief, or rupulle of the tribe, told me that they had caught a white fellow in the night stealing fish from his pound. It will be understood that the natives make enclosures by driving stakes close together into the bottom of the lake, in a circle some twenty or twenty-five feet round, and place the Murray cod which they catch therein, to preserve them alive until the boats arrive with the parties who purchase the fish. To steal fish, then, out of the pound, is like stealing cattle out of a yard. When I heard Peter’s story, I got a lot of men together, and put a crew on board the whaleboat, in charge of an Englishman temporarily employed here; and off we started to catch the thief. As soon as he saw us he went off in a dingy to a boat which was anchored a little way from the shore, no doubt intending to escape; but the whaleboat swept round the corner, and he had to surrender. The foolish fellow cried and blubbered, and confessed to having stolen the fish. I put him into the whale-boat, sent him to Goolwa, and gave him in charge to the police. (He afterwards got a month’s imprisonment with hard labour. ) While we were thief-taking, that is, I and the Point Malcolm tribe, the Mundoo blacks, who were just starting for the lower Lake, tried to do another sort of stealing. They found Nourailinyeri, a young and very pretty girl, the wife of Henry, Captain Jack’s brother, sitting on the shore, so they seized her, and had started off when her husband and friends happened to come back and discovered the abduction. Off they rushed; Captain Jack soon caught her, took her away from her captors, and led her back to the camp. This the Mundoos resented, spears were thrown, and there was a tremendous row. I could not help admiring Captain Jack; he kept his temper excellently,