These were a merry people and seemed highly delighted at our visit, and if one or two of them were a little forward, I laid it to the account of curiosity and a feeling of confidence in their own numbers.  But a little thing checked them, nor did they venture to touch our persons, much less to put their hands into our pockets, as the natives appear to have done, in the case of another explorer.  It is a liberty I never allowed any native to take, not only because I did not like it, but because I am sure it must have the effect of lowering the white man in the estimation of the savage, and diminishing those feelings of awe and inferiority, which are the European’s best security against ill treatment.  The natives told us, that there was no water to the eastward, and that if we went there we should all die.  They explained that the creek commenced on the plains, by spreading out their fingers as the old man had done, to shew that many small channels made a large one, pointing to the creek, and they said the water was all gone to the place we had come from; meaning, to the lower part of it.  On asking them by signs, if the creek continued beyond the plains, they shook their heads, and again put their extended hand on the ground, pointing to the plain.  They could give us no account of the ranges to which I proposed going, any more than others we had asked.  On inquiring, if there was any water to the north-west a long discussion took place, and it was ultimately decided that there was not.  I could understand, that several of them mentioned the names of places where they supposed there might be water, but it was evidently the general opinion that there was none.  Neither did they appear to know of any large waters, on which the natives had canoes, in confirmation of the old man’s actions.  On this interesting and important point they were wholly ignorant.

The smallness of the water-hole, on which these people depended, was quite a matter of surprise to me, and I hardly liked to let the horses drink at it, in consequence.  At sunset all the natives left us (as is their wont at that hour), and went to their own encampment; nor did one approach us afterwards, but they sat up to a late hour at their own camp, the women being employed beating the seed for cakes, between two stones, and the noise they made was exactly like the working of a loom factory.  The whole encampment, with the long line of fires, looked exceedingly pretty, and the dusky figures of the natives standing by them, or moving from one hut to the other, had the effect of a fine scene in a play.  At 11 all was still, and you would not have known that you were in such close contiguity to so large an assemblage of people.