1827.] Terra Incognita. 583 



there made a good fire of dry limbs of trees, which we had not to seek 

 far. The fire wo got by burning priming on a piece of wadding. 



I was too much of a boy not to enjoy all this highly ; but, after we had 

 taken our supper, and the party were all asleep but myself and one of the 

 men, who had the first watch, and sat quietly smoking his pipe at one end 

 of the fire, I could hear troops of native dogs (a-species of wolf) howling 

 dismally as they prowled the neighbouring scrub and the wild cattle in 

 the distance, not lowing, but roaring through the woods; the hooting of the 

 owl, and the twittering ghost-like shriek of the opossum ; all these things, 

 with the novelty of the situation, excited me to such a degree that I cried, 

 and heartily wished for morning. I thought, too, of our poor little kan- 

 garoo, so rudely weaned, and imprisoned in a coarse sack, instead of being 

 nestled at its parent's breast. 



As I remember it now, our group made a fine painter's subject a rude 

 hut, in the midst of a thick forest, open in front to a fire, made of the limbs 

 of trees, and occupying the foreground, behind which, in the centre of the 

 hut, was my companion, a handsome sun-burnt youth of sixteen, wrapped 

 in a boat-cloak, reclining on his arm, bareheaded, and sleeping soundly ; 

 close to him I lay in a somewhat similar attitude, but wide awake, listen- 

 ing anxiously to every sound, and fancying all sorts of horrors, as I looked 

 on the black masses of foliage before us, on the edges of which, a red 

 flickering light fell from our fire ; two of the men lay in one end of the 

 hut with their feet to the fire, and their heads elevated by a log of wood 

 which served them for a bolster, and the third, as I have said, sat on the 

 ground smoking his pipe, or walked backwards and forwards before the 

 hut ; all three had been convicted of some notorious crimes, and probably 

 they had all been under sentence of death ; by my friend lay his fowling- 

 piece, and a musket stood within reach of the man who kept watch,, and 

 the dogs were stretched at length on the ground before the fire, or sat 

 couched (as greyhounds do), looking at the fire, and pricking up their 

 ears at the rustling of the trees, or the leap of the fish in the neighbouring 

 pond, though they heeded not (after the first half-hour) the howling of 

 their canine brotherhood, nor the broken-winded bellowings of a con- 

 quered bull, a beast that had assaulted us in the course of the afternoon, 

 savage from recent defeat, and only went oft* on receiving a charge of 

 slugs, which the man who was carrying the musket fired at him ; the next 

 morning we saw him again, but another twenty-four hours would have 

 made him food for the dogs. 



The native dog of New South Wales is, I believe, indigenous ; yet its 

 dissimilarity to any other animal found in the island would argue, that it 

 must have been left there by some of the early navigators, though I am 

 not aware that it does, or does not, resemble any of the species in the 

 northern hemisphere, whence, in that case, it was most likely taken. 

 I have seen them as large as a good mastiff they are shaggy haired, and 

 of the colour of a wolf; they dp not bark, but their nocturnal bowlings 

 are dismal ; and, from the sound, they appear to be gregarious ; but I never 

 saw more than one at a time. I never knew an instance of their attacking 

 a man, even in self-defence ; but in a sheep-fold they make terrible havoc : 

 I have known fifty or sixty sheep to be killed in a night by one dog ; and 

 to guard against them, every large proprietor has his flocks folded in a 

 cluster at night, and employs a man to keep watch. Young calves have 

 been killed, arid the poultry yard robbed by the same thievish vermin. 

 The natives, though fond of dos?s boiri^ now almost always accompanied 



