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15b
but he could not get them to communicate with him; he offered them tea and bread, but they onyl smelt it and would not taste. Then I told him I would try my hand, and I sat down opposite to them in the same way I had learned and seen years before on the McIntyre River, and smoothed the ground next me with my hand. When 'Old Yulowa' who was evidently the head-man, or doctor, of the trib, got up and sat down by me at once. I then took some sugar and mixed it with water, broke a little bread in it, and let him see me eat it, and he tasted it: he then called out to the other blacks that it was the honey of the Banksia (the blossoms of which they used to steep inw ater and drink), and they all ate. After this, whenever I saw them, they used to come up to me .... in time, they used to fetch fish."
xxvi
The name of Yulowa was given the boy[?] by Wyndham after that of a bay on the island facing Emu Park; he is an old man now, but has a son, 'Paddy', and the little female grandchild left him. Wyndham says that, in his day, Big Keppel was inhabited by two "tribes", the one on the south extremity speaking Tarumbal dialect, the other, on the north, a Broadsound one. A pecularity amongst them is their rapidity of utterance, a fact of which I had been pre-viously informed by the Rockhampton and Yeppoon natives, the latter on this account speaking of them as "crows".
11. Thanks to the Kindness of Mr. W. H. Flowers who supplied me with a copy of a map of the district which he drew up in 1881, it is possible to indicate approximately (see sketch-map) the boundaries of the main tribes, some half dozen or so, which in those days roamed the country. These main tribes were formed of various groups, of greater or less number, named as a rule after some physical peculiarity of that particular spot of country which the individual members regarded as their home. One or two of the main tribes have disappeared in their entirety, though several of the groups, as already mentioned, I