GROUND DOVES 249 



variable in disposition. The tribe one meets and is 

 friendly with to-day may to-morrow be succeeded by 

 one of murderous instincts. But the wild blacks never 

 having horses, a well-mounted traveller is sure of escape, 

 unless he is surprised in his sleep. 



On the 2nd and 3rd of October nothing of interest 

 occurred. The features of the country were similar to 

 those already described, and birds and game were such as is 

 met with and has been described in the accounts of the 

 Champion Bay and Gascoyne River districts. In the two 

 days I saw perhaps a couple of dozen emus in three small 

 groups, four large bustards, and two parties of natives. 

 Neither of the latter took much notice of me, nor did 

 either tribe attempt to communicate with me. The smoke 

 I saw every day throughout this journey was proof that 

 this is one of the best peopled districts of the continent ; 

 that is, so far as the native population is concerned. How 

 it will be when the whites vastly predominate, I do not 

 think it would be wise to predict. At present the white 

 population at Port Darwin belonging, on the whole, to an 

 official and well-educated class, is not likely to ignore the 

 rights of the black men. 



On the 3rd, after passing across some twenty miles of 

 level plain tolerably well wooded, I again reached a 

 hilly tract. Here the hills were nearly all crowned with 

 a line of cliffs from eight to fourteen or eighteen feet high. 

 The highest hill was about six hundred feet in height. 

 Some of these elevations had steep faces rising abruptly 

 from the plain. As usual, there were few trees on these 

 hills, but a uniform sprinkling of bushes was spread over 

 the slopes. 



On these hills were a large number of ground doves of 

 the long-crested kind {Lophophaps plumiferd) scattered 

 about in what I supposed to be family groups of ten or 

 twelve birds. Each little flock was separated by a wide 

 interval from others ; and they never seem to congregate 

 in large crowds ; for I have seen these doves and other 

 allied species on other occasions, and had some oppor- 

 tunities of studying their habits. Their gait and run is 



