tion, and the vegetation much more varied and vigorous than on the forest-land, beyond the reach of floods. These flats are found along the whole course of the main river and its various tributaries, and in the higher parts of its course they are both more frequent and more extensive than in the lower. There would be much less difficulty also in clearing them than I at first apprehended there would be, and they would prove admirable localities for the settlement of small farmers to raise the various productions suited to the district; having each either a portion of the forest-land attached to the alluvial, or liberty to depasture a few cattle upon it. In short, I cannot conceive any thing either in natural or in moral scenery more interesting and beautiful than this noble river would unquestionably be, if its banks were thus lined with the neat cottages and wellcultivated farms of a happy peasantry. At present there is every thing in the disposition of land and water that the lover of the picturesque and beautiful could desire; and pity it is that such a region should be lying entirely waste and unoccupied, when there are so many thousands of our fellow-countrymen struggling with poverty and privations at home!

When we reached a certain point of our course, where the river makes a remarkable bend, and forms a sort of peninsula, Mr. Wade gave Tomboorrowa and little Sydney a gun, and some ammunition, desiring them to cross the neck of the peninsula, and meet us at another point considerably farther up, which he indicated, with whatever game they might chance to fall in with by the way. On our reaching the point referred to, the black fellows had arrived, but without any game, with the exception of a beautifully marked carpet-snake of about four feet long, which Sydney had struck and stunned, but which was still alive. He threw it, as it was, into the bottom of the boat, and the creature beginning to crawl about, I was withdrawing instinctively as far as possible from so apparently dangerous a vicinity, when the black fellows observed, "That fellow no bite,"—meaning that his

bite was not dangerous. When we had reached the highest point of the river to which our excursion was to extend, we went ashore on one of the alluvial flats on the right bank, and Mr. Wade having given one of the natives a Colonial Lucifer Match which he had provided for the occasion, the latter immediately kindled a fire, of the withered grass and dried branches of trees with which the place abounded.* After partaking of some refreshment, Mr. W. again gave Tomboorrowa and Sydney the gun to shoot wild ducks or other game in the bush. In the meantime, one of the other black fellows took the snake, and placing it on the branch of a tree, and striking it on the back of the head repeatedly with a piece of wood, threw it into the fire. The animal was not quite dead, for it wriggled for a minute or two in the fire, and then became very stiff and swollen, apparently from the expansion of the gases imprisoned in its body. The black-fellow then drew it out of the fire, and with a knife cut through the skin longitudinally on both sides of the animal, from the head to the tail. He then coiled it up as a sailor does a rope, and laid it again upon the fire, turning it over again and again with a stick till he thought it sufficiently done on all sides, and superintending the process of cooking with all the interest imaginable. When he thought it sufficiently roasted, he thrust a stick into the coil, and laid it on the grass to cool, and when

* Guunnumbah asked Mr. Wade for the lucifer match, which he knew beforehand he had provided for the excursion, by making the sign of procuring a light with one, as he probably did not know the English name of it. In their native state they uniformly carry fire with them, as being rather troublesome to procure; but when their fire-stick has been extinguished, as is sometimes the case-for their Jins, or Vestal Virgins, who have the charge of the fire, are not always sufficiently vigilant-they easily "strike a light," by means of two pieces of wood, the one of a very soft variety of timber, and the other much harder, making a hole in the soft wood, in which they twirl the other piece with great velocity till smoke and flame are produced, and receiving the latter in the soft downy bark of the tea tree (Melaleuca.)

cool enough to admit of handling, he took it up again, wrung off its head and tail which he threw away, and then broke the rest of the animal by the joints of the vertebrae into several pieces, one of which he threw to the other black-fellow, and another he began eating himself with much apparent relish. Neither Mr. Wade nor myself having ever previously had the good fortune to witness the dressing of a snake for dinner by the black natives, we were much interested with the whole operation, and as the steam from the roasting snake was by no means unsavoury, and the flesh delicately white, we were each induced to try a bit of it. It was not unpalatable by any means, although rather fibrous and stringy like ling-fish. Mr. Wade observed, that it reminded him of the taste of eels; but as there was a strong prejudice against the use of eels as an article of food in the west of Scotland in my boyhood, I had never tasted an eel, and was therefore unable to testify to the correctness of this observation. There was doubtless an equally strong prejudice to get over in the case of the snake, and for an hour or two after I had partaken of it, my stomach was ever and anon on the point of insurrection at the very idea of the thing; but thinking it unmanly to yield to such a feeling, I managed to keep it down.

We had scarcely finished the snake when Tomboorrowa and little Sydney returned again. They had been more successful this time, having shot two wallabies or brush kangaroos and another carpet-snake of six feet in length. A bundle of rotten branches was instantly gathered and thrown upon the expiring embers of our former fire, and both the wallabies and the snake were thrown into the flame. One of the wallabies had been a female, and as it lay dead on the grass, a young one, four or five inches long, crept out of its pouch. I took up the little creature, and, presenting it to the pouch, it crept in again. Having turned round, however, for a minute or two, Gnunnumbah had taken it up and thrown it alive into the fire; for, when I happened to look towards the fire, I saw it in the flames

in the agony of death. In a minute or two the young wallaby being sufficiently done, Gnunnumbah drew it out of the fire with a stick and eat its hind quarters without further preparation, throwing the rest of it away. It is the etiquette among the black natives for the person who takes the game to conduct the cooking of it. As soon, therefore, as the skins of the wallabies had become stiff and distended from the expansion of the gases in the cavity of their bodies, Tomboorrowa and Sydney each pulled out one of them from the fire, and scraping off the singed hair roughly with the hand, cut up the belly and pulled out the entrails. They then cleaned out the entrails, not very carefully by any means, rubbing them roughly on the grass or on the bushes, and then threw them again upon the fire. When they considered them sufficiently done, the two eat them, a considerable quantity of their original contents remaining to serve as a sort of condiment or sauce. The tails and lower limbs of the two wallabies, when the latter were supposed to be done enough, were twisted off and eaten by the other two natives (from one of whom I got one of the vertebræ of the tail and found it delicious); the rest of the carcases, with the large snake, being packed up in a Number of the Sydney Herald to serve as a mess for the whole camp at Brisbane. The black-fellows were evidently quite delighted with the excursion; and on our return to the Settlement they asked Mr. Wade if he was not going again to-mor

row.

CHAPTER V.

NATURAL PRODUCTIONS OF COOKSLAND.

"And Moses sent them to spy out the land unto them,.Get you up this way southward,

land, what it is;

and said and see the

whether it be good or bad; whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not. And they returned from searching of the land after forty days. And they told him and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with MILK and HONEY."-NUMBERS Xiii. 17-27.

AMONG the natural productions of this portion of the Australian Territory, I include those for the raising of which, although they may perhaps be considered rather as artificial productions, no species of cultivation is required. It is the distinguishing characteristic of the Australian Colonies, as compared with those of British America and the West Indies, that their vast territory is immediately and directly available for the purposes of man. If the colonist in these regions be a keeper of sheep, like the patriarch Abel, or if, like the sons of Jacob, he have "much cattle," he has only to rear his tent, or rather his bark hut, in the wilderness, leaving his flocks and herds to range freely around him; for, whether he go to the northward, to the westward, or to the southward, he will be sure to find pasture.

I