Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/53

Rh form; but I regret to say that I always mean to write down the place, but don’t always do it, so that already I have confused them, and that is of no use. The Baron is a very old family friend, and I feel ashamed at my lazy method of trying to oblige him, and always mean to do better “in tyme coming.”

There are many stunted eucalyptus trees, and the ground everywhere, save in the scrub, is strewn with granite rocks and stones. There are both sheep and goats on the island.

For two or three days I noticed a man amongst the trees continually throwing stones at nothing, until he had made a heap; then he went to that heap and threw them back again, until he had formed another heap—it seemed the occupation of a lunatic. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked him what he was doing. He told me he was a digger detained a week in Thursday Island waiting for the boat to go south, and he found it the dullest, dreariest hole he had ever been in (he used quite other words to these, but a long line of blanks looks foolish), and so he was just killing time, and he went on doing this for that whole week! I remonstrated with him at last, and asked why he did not "go on the spree,"and get dead drunk for the rest of the time? He yawned, and said he had done that so often it bored him also. I pointed all round, and said it was a pleasure to be alive and see all that, to wonder at it and revel in it. He surveyed me with unbounded astonishment.

“Well, I'm blanked” he gasped.

“You irritate me,” I said. “You are big and strong, God made you so you may pass for a man, but what are you passing on to? Do you suppose you will be of any use to yourself or any one