Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/147

 EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. 81 many mounds on the shore, covered with mussel shells. They are from ten feet high to four feet. Captain Jack says the blacks made them to bury the dead in at a time of great sickness.* When we got to Point Malcolm we had a hard job to get across the entrance to Lake Albert, as the wind and water were so rough. However, we faced it and got home soon after dark. 16th. I asked Waukeri to-day if he prayed to God, He replied that he had tried but found that he could not. I advised him to go and tell God that he could not pray, and ask Him to help him. 22nd. A good attendance at worship to-day. I spoke of the Bible as the Word of Jehovah. The natives got hold of the idea. After the service Captain Jack and a lot more came round the Bible and looked at it curiously. They asked me to tell them what Jehovah said. I had a long and interesting talk with them. 26th. I tried to make a poor old sick woman understand the Gospel. I fear I did not succeed, although I spoke very simply. Her senses seemed to be quite deadened with old age and pain. It afflicts me very much to see the poor old people dying like beasts, ignorant, wretched, and hopeless. 27th. Most of the men and boys are off to a great duck hunt. They encircle clumps of reeds with their nets, and catch ducks by the hundred. The ducks when moulting are unable to fly, and take refuge in the reeds. I went with some women in the whaleboat to the beds of reeds near Lake Albert passage, and got nine bags of moomoorooke (Murray down) to make beds. Such expeditions give one a good chance for long talks, and thus I am able to gain their attention to instruction. 29th. Sabbath. I preached this morning on the moral law, and never was heard more attentively by any congregation. There were not quite so many as usual at the service on account of the duck hunt. 30th. Had some earnest talk with the blacks about my sermon yesterday. They evidently understood it. I pressed it upon number of skeletons of men and women, all laid side by side.
 * One of these mounds has since been opened and found to contain a vast