George was not pressed to display his accomplishments.  He chose during many months to hold himself in reserve, and to live up to the reputation of being quite a scholar, as far as scholarship goes among blacks.  But in accordance with expectations, his pride and enthusiasm got the better of him.  He produced two scraps of paper, on each of which were a number of sinuous lines and scrawls, saying

“You write all asame this kind?”

“No,” I said, “I no write like that.”

“This easy fella?  All the time me write this kind.”

“Well, what you write?” George’s attention at once became concentrated, and gazing steadfastly on the paper for a minute or so for the marshalling of his wits, said—­“This fella say Coleman Riber, Coen Riber?  Horse Dead Creek, Massac (Massacre) Riber, Big Morehead, Kennedy Riber, Laura Riber.”  These are the names of some of the streams north from Cooktown, George’s country.  On the other scrap of paper, according to him, the names of some of the islands in this neighbourhood were written.  Though the papers were transposed and turned upside down, George could read them with equal facility.  The list of rivers would be read for the islands, and the islands for the rivers, quite indifferently, and with entertaining naivete.  But he treasured the papers, and continued to delude his fellows with the display of what they considered to be wonderful cleverness.

YAB-oo-RAGOO, otherwise “Mickie”

“Mislike me not for my complexion.”

He said that his name was Mickie, and that he was an Irishman, and a native of the great Palm Island—­40 miles south.  He hath no personal comeliness—­his face is his great misfortune.  Though he asserts with pride his nationality, he admits that his mother, now among the stars, “sat down alonga ’nother side,” and his complexion, or rather what is seen of it through an artless layer of charcoal and grease, applied out of respect to the memory of his deceased brother-in-law, shows no Celtic trace.  Yet he has a keen appreciation of fun, has ready wit, and, according to his own showing, is not averse to a shindy, so that, perhaps his given name is at least characteristic of his assumed race.  A flat overhanging forehead, keen black eyes, a broad-rooted, unobtrusive nose, a most capacious mouth, beard and whiskers thin and unkempt, and a fierce-looking moustache, a head of hair which in boyhood days had probably been a mass of crisp curls, but now shaggy tufts, matted and uneven, altogether a shockingly repulsive physiognomy, and yet an “honest Injin” in every respect and one who would always look on the happy side of life, but for twinges of neuralgia—­“monda” he calls it—­which rack his head and face with pain.  I saw only the peaceful side of Mickie’s nature, and therefore this chronicle will be unsensational as well as imperfect.  There is a tradition that the Palm Island blacks are of a milder, less bellicose