NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 281 



to the shores of Lake Gardiner. And these granite boulders 

 often have large reservoirs of water on them, on which the natives 

 depend for their supply of water. The Plains upon which my 

 well is situated are entirely waterless, except a few little pockets 

 that occur in the Limestone, and which seldom contain more than 

 buckets, and seem to me to be placed there by a kind Providence 

 to enable the simple denizens of these wilds to traverse them 

 occasionally in safety and comfort. Once let him reach the 

 Mallee scrubs, and he is as safe and assured as if a river flowed 

 at his feet, for in a very little time he would have a supply from 

 the roots of a Eucalypt or Casuarina. At this particular time of 

 the year a white substance is found upon the Mallee leaves ; you 

 have seen it, no doubt ; it is commonly called '^ manna," and is 

 a secretion formed by a small insect, under which its eggs are 

 laid, and upon the leaf. This is collected in enormous quantities, 

 and any savage you meet will offer you his wammar or bale of 

 this substance. Seen in a lump as they carry it, it has a dazzlingly 

 white appearance, and svery is weet and agreeable. In a week or 

 thereabout Eigel [Beta OrionisJ will set with the sun, and then 

 they know that the Emu commences to lay, and live for a season 

 upon its eggs, then a succession of roots and animals ensue, and 

 during the fervid and blistering heat of summer they live almost 

 entirely upon the eggs of the Mallee Hen fLeipoa ocellataj, 

 cheerful, happy, contented, and clever, with wondrous powers of 

 endurance and self-control, with laws of morality that would be 

 observed but by few communities of civilized beings. 



'' I can imagine no people more happy in their innocence and 

 ignorance than they are; last summer over 100 blacks were 

 collected here, met — as they often do — to see each other, and 

 exchange their weapons or tools, and have a week or two of 

 social intercourse — a corroboree and so on. The whole of them 

 were painted and feathered, and looking very fierce and terrible. 

 Hideous howls and cries rent the midnight air when they had a 

 corroboree ; but I never was molested, and often for days I was 



