EVENING MEAL. 237 



penetrate a substance as firm as glue and as stringy 

 as cat-gut. The flavour was well, the least said 

 soonest mended. I threw the repulsive carcase 

 away, carefully wiped my knife, in case any of the 

 fragments of the unsavoury morsel should remain 

 attached to it, and give it a taste and odour which 

 would not leave it for days. As I put it into my 

 pocket I could not help moralising a capital thing 

 to do when hungry to the effect that, smart as I 

 imagined myself, yet I, like others, was sometimes 

 sold. My pointer, who, like others of the same 

 species, was of a very hungry type, a fellow that 

 could crack into splinters a shank mutton-bone, or 

 pick out tit-bits from a squatter's ash-pit in a nearly 

 thoroughly decomposed state and apparently enjoy 

 them, actually, on being offered owl, turned his nose 

 up, and steadfastly refused to touch it. I need not 

 say that after such experience as this, hungry as I 

 was, I spared the emblem of wisdom. Happily my 

 forbearance was rewarded, for when I joined the old 

 man, who had pushed forward with the horses, I 

 found that he had captured another porcupine, of 

 which we made our evening meal. 



Our camp was this night on the margin of a lake 

 several miles long, which, from the transparency and 

 colour of its waters, I judged to be very deep. The 

 scenery that surrounded its north-west shore was 

 grand in the extreme, perpendicular rocks rising in 

 some places from the water's edge to an elevation of 



