Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/136

 74 OPPOSITION OF THE OLD PEOPLE. Creole from the Cape." I took a picture of Cape Town, and asked him if that was like the place he came from. He replied that it was. All the while the blacks stood round listening and drawing their own conclusions. I told him that the boat should take him to Milang on Monday. 19th. Last night I heard the impostor, whose name is Armstrong, telling some women and children that he was Jemmy Myers, who had come back from the other world. He told them a lot of absurd rubbish to make them afraid of him. So we went, and before them all charged him with being an impostor. At last he confessed that he had allowed the blacks to believe that he was Jemmy Myers. I told him that it might be all very well as long as he was with the friends of that deceased worthy, but if he got amongst Myers’s enemies he ran great risk of being knocked on the head. I expostulated with him on his wickedness, and told him that I would do all I could to undeceive the natives. Most of them seem convinced now that he is a liar. The women abhor him. They are quite ashamed to speak of his abominable doings. This miserable wretch has been living on the natives for eight months. I took him to Milang in the boat to-day, and there got rid of him. We tried to promote the temporal well-being of the blacks. In order to this we did everything possible to procure profitable employment for the able-bodied and industrious. I exerted myself to procure a market for the fish which they caught, and was moderately successful. We also gave employment in fencing and clearing land to the young men. But the old people and more barbarous of the natives did not like to see the young men at this sort of work. So violent was their opposition at, first that they came down in numbers from the camp and beat the labourers cruelly with their waddies, and forced them to leave their work. They hoped thus to drive the young men from being so much under my influence. They used to say the young fellows would get too much like whitefellows. I have known an industrious man who dared not go out of sight of the white man