"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.