They were their masters' dressers, so to speak, in that they were required to carry supplies of the greasy clay or earth with which the blacks anoint their bodies to ward off the sun's rays and insect bites; and beside this, woe betide the wives if _corroboree_ time found them without an ample supply of coloured pigments for the decoration of their masters' bodies.

One of the principal duties of the women-folk, however, was the provision of roots for the family's dinner.

The most important among these necessaries--besides fine yams--were the root and bud of a kind of water- lily, which when roasted tasted not unlike a sweet potato.
There was usually a good water supply in the neighbourhood of these camps, and if it failed (as it very frequently did), the whole tribe simply moved its quarters elsewhere--perhaps a hundred miles off.
The instinct of these people for finding water, however, was nothing short of miraculous.

No one would think of going down to the seashore to look for fresh water, yet they often showed me the purest and most refreshing of liquids oozing up out of the sand on the beach after the tide had receded.
All this time, and for many months afterwards, my boat and everything it contained were saved from molestation and theft by a curious device on the part of Yamba.

She simply placed a couple of crossed sticks on the sand near the bows, this being evidently a kind of Masonic sign to all beholders that they were to respect the property of the stranger among them; and I verily believe that the boat and its contents might have remained there until they fell to pieces before any one of those cannibal blacks would have dreamed of touching anything that belonged to me.
After a time the natives began pointedly to suggest that I should stay with them.