A remarkable case is in the early records of the Lower Murray (between New South Wales and Victoria), and was quoted long since.  A number of blacks died in agonising convulsions.  Some thirty had succumbed, before a dear old German doctor, who wandered up and down the river, a loved and welcome guest at every station, happened along when a gin was stricken.  He diagnosed strychnine poisoning.  The greatest mystery surrounded the affair, and some of the whites undertook to watch the camp.  A clue was furnished by the old doctor, who, when attending to the dying gin, noticed that one of the men seemed to find her sufferings most diverting.  He laughed, wandered away, and returned time after time, repeating to himself before each outburst—­“My word, plenty kick it, that fella!” Somebody remembered that this black, who rejoiced in the name of Tommy Simpson, had been almost tickled to death when he saw a dog dying at the station from strychnine.  He was watched, and some of the powder he had stolen from a bottle in the store discovered in a piece of opossum skin inside a very dilapidated old hat.  Taxed with the crime, he made free admission of his guilt, but was apparently incapable of realising that he had done any wrong.  It seemed that his chief reason for keeping his secret so long was that he wanted to have the fun all to himself.  The other blacks were very differently impressed; they surrounded Tommy Simpson and speared him until he died.  To the last, Tommy’s ruling frame of mind was surprise, and he went to his death quite unable to understand why his fellows should have made such a fuss about his little joke.

JUMPED AT A CONCLUSION

Occasionally black boys have the misfortune to do exactly the wrong thing with the best intentions.  A beche-de-mer schooner sadly in need of a coat of paint, ran into a northern port and brought up alongside a similar but tidy craft, which at the time was laid up.  In obedience to natural curiosity the captain went on board the idle vessel and had a good look over her, paced off some of her dimensions and mentally approved her lines.  In the morning he brought out a quantity of black paint with which a friend who had taken pity of the weather-beaten condition of his vessel had presented him, and ordered his boys to begin work.  Then he went ashore, spending a most agreeable morning among his friends. just before dinner a chum asked him what his boys were doing.  He replied, “Oh, before I left I set them to work to paint the ship.”  “Do you know what ship they are painting?” asked the friend.  “Yes!  I am jolly well sure it’s mine.”  “Well, you had better go and see how they are getting on.”  He went, and found all hands merrily at work painting the strange vessel.  They had in excess of industry covered one of her neat white sides completely, having jumped at the conclusion that the captain had bought her.  It was an expensive blunder, and a practical lesson in the chemistry of colours.  A large quantity of white paint had to be bought to smother the black coat, and another lot of black paint for his own woe-begone craft.