344 Notes on Sport and Travel m 



fact of there being no quadrupeds in his island but 

 those he brought with him, — they being still younger 

 than Australia, who had already developed her birds 

 into animals, though simple ones, through the birdy 

 Ornithorhynchus and Echidna. 



The seas around him teemed with nutritious and 

 easily-caught fish, and he himself was a most admir- 

 able fisherman, though his best hook was made out 

 of a cunning slice of the shin-bone of an elderly 

 friend or enemy, as the case may be ; and if he 

 grew tired of mere fish without sauce, as every one 

 must grow sooner or later (the feeding of the working 

 poor on any fish but red herring or salt cod being a 

 mere dream of the philanthropist), he had an infinity 

 of mighty cartilaginous sharks in every bay to fall 

 back on, which, split and dried in the sun and wind,^ 

 gave him a food to walk and fight on of infinitely 

 greater potency than the decomposing animal matter 

 dealt out to our soldiers and sailors by Christian 

 contractors ; or the sham salted pemmican " (pem- 

 mican, Heaven bless the mark ! — names answer for 



1 To show what great effects may be produced by peace, let me 

 mention that it was calculated by a sure hand that the putting down 

 of native wars in New Zealand permitted some 40,000 sharks to re- 

 main annually in their native element. Whether the higher fishes 

 and the higher men that lived on them profited much is not so clear. 

 The poor dear Maori did not, at any rate. 



2 With real buffalo pemmican, as used by the Hudson's Bay people, 

 our sledge parties might have gone on, as far as scurvy was concerned, 

 ad infinitum. Also, why not employ the Hudson's Bay people, who 

 have been employed all their lives in sledging, instead of sailors, 

 whose upper works are good enough, but whose walking and dragging 

 powers are naught ? 



