On Gun Accidents. 367 



from certain death that, at the risk of tiring my readers, I must 

 relate it. 



When kangarooing in Australia, there was a little patch of swamp 

 oak, two or three feet high, in a meadow close to which some kan- 

 garoo used to come and feed every night, about a mile from our 

 tent. Besides our party there was another tent about three miles 

 from us, occupied by two shooting American backwoodsmen, who 

 never drove the kangaroo,, and when the drove came up murdered 

 them by wholesale with charges of buck shot, but always stalked 

 them in the bush, and killed them in a sportsmanlike manner with 

 long rifles. It is needless to say that they were both first-rate shots, 

 and I have seen them cut a pigeon's head off with a single ball 

 when sitting on a tree at a distance of fifty or sixty paces. Although 

 the bush where we camped was as free to one as another, as each 

 party had lots of kangaroo within a short distance of home (this 

 was before they were shot out in the Western Port district), by a kind 

 of tacit consent we made a rule never hardly to go on each other's 

 beat. Now this patch of scrub was in our territory, and I never 

 expected meeting one of these Canadians there, especially at night. 

 I had often seen the kangaroo feeding here in the twilight, and one 

 evening determined to " lurch" one if possible. It was moonlight, 

 but hazy, and the moon gave a sickly uncertain light. I went 

 down quietly by myself through the forest, and got within, per- 

 haps, a hundred and fifty yards of the kangaroo, which I could 

 indistinctly see feeding by the edge of the scrub. I then began to 

 creep. I was dressed all in grey, with a kangaroo-skin cap on (this 

 colour I fancy best for all night shooting) ; and as I kept occasionally 

 cautiously lifting up my head while creeping through the scrub, to 

 peep if the kangaroo were quiet, I have no doubt, at a little dis- 

 tance off in that indistinct light, I could well be mistaken for a 

 kangaroo myself. I had not crept far, however, before the kan- 

 garoo either heard or winded me j and the deep, measured " thump, 

 thump" of their tails upon the ground as they started off was very 

 unpleasant music to my ear. But the click of the lock of a back- 



