152 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



day is starred in my journals merely as the Farthest 

 South (45S.) of my wanderings with fishhooks. 



Amid very different scenery, in a tropical cli- 

 mate, I made some equally ineffectual essays to get 

 on terms with the Giant Perch of Fitzroy River. 

 In that Queensland estuary we had been anchored 

 for a fortnight, our insatiate steamer swallowing 

 endless rations of wool down three hatchways. 

 We got through the time somehow, chiefly shooting 

 and fishing. We shot kangaroos on an island, 

 but shooting one of those marsupials is not much 

 more exciting than missing another. A few duck 

 afforded prettier sport, and I recollect bringing 

 down a high overhead bird with the choke barrel 

 of my gun, and the body went swish into a dark 

 and marshy patch of mangrove, into which neither 

 the ship's purser nor myself cared to venture, 

 fearing, no doubt, some deadly snake or hungry 

 crocodile. Poor fellow ! he died by his own hand 

 the day we got to Tilbury, so he might just as 

 well have retrieved the duck and taken his chance 

 of a more honourable ending. This shooting not 

 merely gave little result, but it entailed terrible 

 tramps over baking plains composed of loose soil 

 undermined by land-crabs, of a kind to make 

 walking any distance a painful job. I therefore 

 preferred as a rule to spend the day fishing for 

 these giant perch from the little pier beside the 

 lighthouse. From the vessel herself we could 



