LANDING AT A VILLAGE. 269 



The village stood in an irregular, open space, the 

 houses being about fifty yards from the water's edge, 

 and the thick woods about fifty yards behind them. 

 This open ground was covered with heaped bushes 

 of low trailing herbage, and large-leaved succulent 

 plants concealing the lower parts of the houses a 

 good deal. As we could not tell what number of 

 people might be in the village, and the large house 

 seemed capable of holding two or three hundred 

 men with great facility, we fired a round shot over 

 it from one of the six -pounders. On this the men 

 disappeared from the balcony, but shewed themselves 

 again as we were landing. We took both the cutter 

 and Prince Georges gig, being altogether about 

 a dozen of us, well armed ; but the rain was pouring 

 so incessantly as to make it difficult to keep our 

 fire-arms in a sufficiently dry state to be useful The 

 banks of the river were composed of black mud, and 

 were now about three feet out of water, very soft 

 and rotten, and our only means of landing was by 

 the slippery stem of a fallen tree, a little below the 

 last house. Having with some difficulty all got 

 ashore, we proceeded in single file along a muddy 

 little path, leading in front of the houses. A ditch? 

 full of water, crossed our path, containing several 

 good sized canoes, shewing us the way in which 

 they kept them hidden and ready for immediate use, 



Several of them were white, or white patched with brown ; but 

 others were of a reddish brown all over, with sharp snout, bushy 

 tail, rather small body, and erect ears, precisely like the dingo. 



