Vol. VIII. 

 1909 



1 Jackson, In the Barron River Valley, N.Q. 257 



thatched with pahn-leaves, blady grass {Imperata arundhiacea) , 

 &€., the latter known to these natives as " CJiej'ra-garrar As 

 will be remembered, I judged it wise on the former occasion to 

 give these wild warriors a wide berth, and on the occasion of 

 my second visit I did the same thing. No wariness or caution, 

 however, will keep you immune from leeches and scrub-itch 

 mites ; they are truly awful pests, and the former are much 

 worse since the heavy rains. 



What wonderful timber is in these dense jungle solitudes ! 

 One giant parasitical fig-tree, the largest I have ever seen, 

 measured 60 feet across at the roots, and was worth coming a 

 long distance to see. I photographed the lower portion of it, 

 after we had cut down sufificient trees and vines to make room 

 for the camera. The tree is known to the aborigines as 

 " Coolara." Everything here is on a big scale, even the pestilent 

 lawyer vines, sometimes up to an inch and a half in thickness. 

 A vine of this strength has been known to stand a strain of 

 nearly 40 tons. Occasionally huge logs are hauled out of the 

 scrub by their means ; in fact, if the strain be direct, they can 

 harness a team of fourteen horses to them for log haulage. 



We had acquired two or three aboriginal camp-followers by 

 this time, like all of their type intensely lazy, but possessed of 

 climbing powers beyond anything any white man could ever 

 develop. Moreover, their local knowledge of places, birds, and 

 animals was exceedingly useful. I conversed in " pidgin " 

 English with many of these local " niggers," but none of them 

 had ever found or seen the nest or eggs of the " Cherra-chelbo " 

 or Tooth-bill, but Rifle-Birds' and all other eggs they could 

 describe to me. I offered them a handsome and encouraging 

 reward if they found a nest and took me to it. Numbers of 

 them turned out for the hunt, but returned always to me, 

 usually saying — " Me tink it that pfeller ' Cherra-chelbo ' sit 

 down yamba (sleep) alonga big pfeller tree. Me looket longa 

 time, no findem nes or heg." This does not look as if the eggs 

 will ever be a common exhibit in the oological collections. The 

 birds seemingly baffle both whites and blacks, the latter born and 

 reared amongst them, too. Above all "white pfeller tomahawk" is 

 an inducement which will betray these " niggers " into exertion 

 of body and brain quite foreign to their usual slothful habit. 

 Queer tastes they have, too. I came across the best man of 

 our " staff" cutting out large white grubs (the larvae of beetles) 

 from a log in the scrub and eating them raw ! This grub, called 

 in their dialect ''Jam-boon',' seems highly esteemed by these 

 dusky people. 



I found several more nests of the Pheasant-tailed Pigeon, and 

 recorded a good many points of interest. Amongst them was a 

 vine(F//w, sp.) naturally knotted at about every 18 inches, thus 

 aflbrding great assistance in climbing. I also came across a 



