300 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



heat as the day grew on seeming to take on a visible, 

 tremulous reality, the leaves of the trees hanging down, 

 apparently dead, not a sound anywhere except the foot- 

 fall of two horses. When the sun was in its meridian 

 I got off and lay down under the thickest tree I could 

 find. Overhead I heard a scraping noise and won- 

 dered what it was, and, looking up, caught the bright, 

 round eye of an opossum scratching his claws in the 

 gum-tree. How I thirsted for his blood ! But I had 

 no means of either catching or killing him. I lay 

 so still he almost touched me as he came down and 

 skipped off to another tree, and I was sorry when 

 he went ; at least, he was some kind of companion. 

 But what roused me from a stupor into which I was 

 undoubtedly falling was a pungent, aromatic smell, 

 which I had not before noticed, growing stronger and 

 stronger as some unfelt wave of air brought it to my 

 nostrils. I sat up, wondering what it could be, and 

 looking about, saw, a few yards off, an advancing 

 column of the red soldier ant of the bush. I instantly 

 got on my feet with a feeling of horror, for I remem- 

 bered the dead barkeeper of Canoona and the sight 

 of a dead man's bones, picked as white as snow, which 

 I had once seen somewhere else. I knew, too, that 

 these ravenous insects do not wait for the death of 

 their prey, for I had seen them swarming over an 

 unfortunate cow, lying with her back broken at the 

 bottom of a gully, her mouth, eyes, nostrils full of the 

 all-pervading horror. I saw myself in the same plight, 

 overmastered by millions of these scourges, my eyes 

 pierced by their terrible jaws, and my breath choked. 

 And doubtless it was a providential discovery in time ; 

 for had I fallen asleep I see no reason for doubting 



