as times required to gain it. For this end they avail themselves of every inequality of the ground, of every bush, of every shrub, and, as there are so many witnesses of their skill and cunning, they put forth all their art to approach near the kangaroos as possible without disturbing them; and thus the circle narrows in around the unconscious animals, till at last some one of them becomes alarmed and bounds away. But ere it has proceeded many yards, its flight is arrested by a savage with fearful yells. Terrified, it sits down with its frightened comrades, and looks for an avenue of escape; but armed natives, brandishing their spears, and raising loud cries, come running in upon them from every side, and ere the animals have recovered from the effect of the first terror and surprise, a slaughter has already commenced, which seldom terminates before the greater number of them have fallen. These great public hunts, or battues, are conducted under certain rules. The proprietor of the land must have invited the other natives, and must be present himself; for should these regulations be violated, a very bloody fight is certain to take place. The first spear which strikes a kangaroo determines whose property the dead animal is to be, it being no matter how slight the wound may have been—even if a boy threw the spear the rule holds good; and if the animal killed is one which, by their laws, a boy is not allowed to eat, then his right passes on to his father, or eldest male relation. The cries of the hunters, as they ring through the ancient woods, are very expressive and beautiful, each different intonation belonging to a particular part of the hunt. Emus are killed in precisely the same manner as kangaroos; but as they are more prized by the natives, a greater degree of excitement prevails when an emu is slain; shout succeeds shout, and the distant natives take up the cry until it is sometimes re-echoed for miles. Yet the feast which follows the death is a very exclusive one; the flesh is by far too delicious to be made a common article of food; hence heavy penalties are pronounced against young men and unauthorised persons who venture to touch it. SIR GEORGE GREY'S EXPLORATIONS IN AFFRAY WITH NATIVES NEAR GLENELG RIVER. WHILST my men were despatched for some stores which we had left behind us on the previous day, I started from the encampment on foot, with the intention of choosing a track for our next day's route, accompanied by Corporal Coles and a fine young man about twenty years of age, leaving only three men at the camp. Soon after my departure, these men heard the voices of natives in the woods; and presently they themselves appeared, in numbers which rapidly increased, until there were collected together about two hundred, men, women, and children. The party at the tents instantly got under arms, and posted themselves on the brow of the hill on which our tents stood; while at some distance from its base, and on the opposite side of the stream, the natives were assembled. The women and children moved round the hill, examining everything with the most intense delight. A pony which was in front of the camp particularly excited their attention; the little children laughed loudly at it, and appeared also to laugh at our men, regarding them much in the same way as little boys do a stranger in a foreign costume, when he appears. D in the streets of one of our country villages. The men, however, regarded the pony more seriously; they walked round and round, examining it carefully; and at length, when the animal, becoming playful from these marks of attention, neighed, put down its head, and prepared to fight and kick vigorously, they all beat a precipitate retreat. After some time, distant shouts were heard from other natives in the direction in which I had myself gone, and a large body of the native men instantly hurried off to that quarter. Meantime another scene, but connected with this, was passing some distance off in the interior. On quitting the camp in the morning, I and my two companions traversed for some time portions of the elevated sandstone plains which I had passed on a former occasion; and, after an hour's walking through the gloomy, stringybark forest which covered them, we reached a stream of water running in a shallow valley; and as the descent to this was bad, I halted to make a road which the ponies could traverse. Whilst at work on the road, we all thought that we heard a native call, and that others answered him; but my attention was soon occupied by other objects, and nothing occurred till about three-quarters of an hour after, when we arrived at a short declivity covered with rocks, from which started a large kangaroo. I got a fair shot at it, and knocked it over; but it sprang up again and hopped away. We then tried to track it, but soon lost its footsteps in the scrubby vegetation of the gloomy forest. It was the duty of the man who accompanied me to mark a tree every here and there by notching the bark, so that the party might the next day easily trace the route which they had to pursue. Upon looking back, I now observed that he had neglected a very remarkable tree about twenty or thirty yards behind us, and which stood close to the spot where I had fired at the kangaroo. I desired my man to go back and chip it, and then to rejoin us; in the meantime, I stood musing as to the best means of avoiding the little rocky ravine in our front. Finding that the man remained absent longer than I had expected, I called loudly to him; but receiving no answer, I thereupon hurried round some rocks which hid the tree from my view to look after him, when suddenly he rushed up to me breathless and speechless with terror, a native with his spear fixed in a throwing-stick in full pursuit of him. Immediately numbers of other natives burst upon my sight; each tree, each rock, seemed to give forth its black denizen, as if by enchantment. A moment before, the most solemn silence pervaded these woods; we deemed that not a human being moved within miles of us; and now they rang with savage and ferocious yells, and fierce armed men crowded round us on every side, bent on our destruction. There was something very terrible in so complete and sudden a surprise. Certain death appeared to stare us in the face; and the determined and resolute air of our opponents I immediately guessed to be due to the conduct of the man who, instead of boldly standing his ground, and calling to Coles and myself for assistance, had at once, like a coward, taken to his heels, and run away from them; and this conjecture I afterwards ascertained to be correct. We were now fairly engaged for our lives; escape was impossible, and surrender to such enemies out of the question. As soon as I saw the natives around me, I fired one barrel of my gun over the head of him who was pursuing my dismayed attendant, hoping that the report would check his further career. But in this I miscalculated, for he still closed on us, and his spear whistled by my head; but whilst he was fixing another in his throwing-stick, a ball from my second barrel struck him on the arm, and it fell powerless by his side. He now retired behind a rock; but the others still pressed on. I now made the two men retire behind some neighbouring rocks, which formed a kind of protecting parapet along our front and right flank, whilst I took post on the left. Both my barrels were now exhausted, and therefore I desired my companions to fire separately as I was reloading; but to my horror, Coles, who was armed with my rifle, reported hurriedly that the cloth case with which he had covered it for protection against rain, had become entangled, so that his services were lost at a most critical moment; while the other man was so paralysed with fear, that he could do nothing but cry out, "O sir! look at them, look at them!" In the meantime, our opponents pressed more closely round us; their spears kept whistling by us, and our fate seemed inevitable. Their leader sprang forward to a rock not more than thirty yards from us, and posting himself behind it, threw a spear with such deadly force and aim, that, had I not drawn myself forward by a sudden jerk, it must have gone through my body; as it was, it grazed my back as it flew over me. Another well-directed spear, from a different hand, would have pierced me in the breast; but in the motion I made to avoid it, it stuck upon the stock of my gun, of which it carried away a portion. All this took place in a few seconds of time; no shot had been fired but by me, and I saw that but one thing could be done to save our lives. I gave Coles my gun to complete the reloading, and took the rifle, to disengage it from the cover. This I tore violently off, and stepping out from behind our parapet, I advanced to the rock which covered my opponent. I had not made three steps in advance, when three spears struck me nearly at the same moment, one of which |