Ixiv ITINERARY. 



time in such a field one is inclined to run risks that would be 

 inexcusable otherwise. Certainly it did not occur to me that, outside 

 of my own possible suffering, I might so considerably inconvenience 

 McConnell and prolong the expedition through helplessness. 



In the meantime, McConnell was a centre of activity not only as to 

 the birds, but also to the plants, which required frequent changing in 

 the presses and dry warm paper. When the weather was bad, the 

 cassava baking-slabs in the houses had to serve as driers, with but the 

 loss of a paper or two occasionally. He was often out with his gun, 

 and the men were kept busy ranging over the district. From the little 

 they brought in, we felt sure they spent the time (or most of it) either 

 at neighbouring villages or sitting down away from observation. They 

 had been told that rattlesnakes and labarrias, which are the two 

 commonest of the poisonous snakes of the colony, were often met with 

 in the grass, and we had been inclined to look on it as an attempt on 

 the part of the Arrekunas to frighten them, as the elevation seemed 

 against it. Schoolmaster, however, assured us it was the case, and 

 McConnell himself had once had a very narrow escape from a labarria 

 not far above the village. He was walking through the grass on the 

 slopes carrying his gun on his arm as was almost habitual with him, 

 when a sudden feeling came over him — as he said afterwards — that a 

 snake was in the grass poised for striking ; and without waiting to 

 aim, he just dropped the gun to his hand and pulled the trigger. Some 

 sort of unusual movement in the grass must have struck his glance in 

 a sort of unconscious way, for there surely lay a good-sized labarria 

 with the front of the body blown to pieces by the close discharge, and 

 it had been just where his leg would have been struck by it. As 'he 

 wore no leggings and only thin trousers, it probably would have been a 

 fatal bite. Considering the amount of travel that has been done all 

 over the colony, it has been on very rare occasions that so close a shave 

 has been run. Luckily, these i-eptiles are mostly on the move at night 

 and quiescent by day in retired spots, so the chances are few that one 

 would tread either on or very close to them, and even in the latter 

 case they often remain quite undisturbed, as happened with the bush- 

 master mentioned by McConnell in the first volume. 



The Arrekuna boys of the two villages proved invaluable in getting 

 the small birds with their short blowpipe and arrows. After McConnell 

 began paying them with bright three-penny pieces — new ones obtained 

 specially for the trip — he had no difficulty in getting all the boys into 

 service, and even the little chap photographed with the breech-loader 

 in Vol. I. p. xxiv had proved to be quite an expert in that way. The 

 tiny blowpipe-arrows were not tipped with poison, as in the larger 

 ones, the blow itself proving sufficient for the smaller birds ; and in 

 the case of the very smallest, such as the humming-birds, they used a 

 blunt and thicker-headed arrow, by which the bird was only partly 

 stunned, giving time to run up and secure it. The plumage was thus 

 not soiled by blood either then or in the skinning, as sometimes may 

 happen after the most careful plugging of shot-holes. Perhaps Whitely 

 had left some of these methods as a tradition in the district, and this 

 was almost certainly the case as to the manner in which the birds were 

 carried. Instead of being put into the usual hunting- bag of string or 



