He chops firewood for the boats sometimes, but it isn't his profession -- he's a fisherman. He is only sane on points concerning the river, though he has all the fisherman's eccentricities. Of course he is a liar.
When he gets his camp fixed on one bank it strikes him he ought to be over on the other, or at a place up round the bend, so he shifts.
Then he reckons he was a fool for not stopping where he was before.
He never dies. He never gets older, or drier, or more withered looking, or dirtier, or loonier -- because he can't. We cannot imagine him as ever having been a boy, or even a youth. We cannot even try to imagine him as a baby. He is an animated mummy, who used to fish on the Nile three thousand years ago, and catch nothing.
. . . . .
We forgot to mention that there are wonderfully few wrecks on the Darling.
The river boats seldom go down -- their hulls are not built that way -- and if one did go down it wouldn't sink far. But, once down, a boat is scarcely ever raised again; because, you see, the mud silts up round it and over it, and glues it, as it were, to the bottom of the river.
Then the forty-foot alligators -- which come down with the "Queenslan' rains", we suppose -- root in the mud and fill their bellies with sodden flour and drowned deck-hands.
They tried once to blow up a wreck with dynamite because it (the wreck) obstructed navigation; but they blew the bottom out of the river instead, and all the water went through. The Government have been boring for it ever since. I saw some of the bores myself -- there is one at Coonamble.
There is a yarn along the Darling about a cute Yankee who was invited up to Bourke to report on a proposed scheme for locking the river.
He arrived towards the end of a long and severe drought, and was met at the railway station by a deputation of representative bushmen, who invited him, in the first place, to accompany them to the principal pub -- which he did. He had been observed to study the scenery a good deal while coming up in the train, but kept his conclusions to himself.
On the way to the pub he had a look at the town, and it was noticed that he tilted his hat forward very often, and scratched the back of his head a good deal, and pondered a lot; but he refrained from expressing an opinion -- even when invited to do so. He guessed that his opinions wouldn't do much good, anyway, and he calculated that they would keep till he got back "over our way" -- by which it was reckoned he meant the States.
When they asked him what he'd have, he said to Watty the publican:
"Wal, I reckon you can build me your national drink. I guess I'll try it."
A long colonial was drawn for him, and he tried it. He seemed rather startled at first, then he looked curiously at the half-empty glass, set it down very softly on the bar, and leaned against the same and fell into a reverie; from which he roused himself after a while, with a sorrowful jerk of his head.
"Ah, well," he said. "Show me this river of yourn."
They led him to the Darling, and he had a look at it.
"Is this your river?" he asked.
"Yes," they replied, apprehensively.
He tilted his hat forward till the brim nearly touched his nose, scratched the back of his long neck, shut one eye, and looked at the river with the other. Then, after spitting half a pint of tobacco juice into the stream, he turned sadly on his heel and led the way back to the pub.
He invited the boys to "pisen themselves"; after they were served he ordered out the longest tumbler on the premises, poured a drop into it from nearly every bottle on the shelf, added a lump of ice, and drank slowly and steadily.
Then he took pity on the impatient and anxious population, opened his mouth, and spake.
"Look here, fellows," he drawled, jerking his arm in the direction of the river, "I'll tell you what I'll dew. I'll bottle that damned river of yourn in twenty-four hours!"
Later on he mellowed a bit, under the influence of several drinks which were carefully and conscientiously "built" from plans and specifications supplied by himself, and then, among other things, he said:
"If that there river rises as high as you say it dew -- and if this was the States -- why, we'd have had the Great Eastern up here twenty years ago" ---- or words to that effect.
Then he added, reflectively:
"When I come over here I calculated that I was going to make things hum, but now I guess I'll have to change my prospectus.
There's a lot of loose energy laying round over our way, but I guess that if I wanted to make things move in your country I'd have to bring over the entire American nation -- also his wife and dawg.
You've got the makings of a glorious nation over here, but you don't get up early enough!"
. . . . .
The only national work performed by the blacks is on the Darling.
They threw a dam of rocks across the river -- near Brewarrina, we think -- to make a fish trap. It's there yet. But God only knows where they got the stones from, or how they carried them, for there isn't a pebble within forty miles.
