A DAY AMONG THE KANGAROOS. 
By W1iuiaM SENIOR. 
Before the tablecloth had been removed I 
had learned to look upon the kangaroo as a 
downright pest in the thriving colony of 
Queensland, Australia. The talk had been of 
its ravages upon our host’s pastures, and we 
had been all amused at the production, by one 
of the company, of an advertisement clipped 
from an English newspaper, designed to 
attract emigrants to the colony, and concluding 
with the words in capital type letters, ‘‘ Liberty 
and Kangaroos!” Other attractions had been 
offered to the workingmen of the old country, 
but this last line, set out in conspicuous isola- 
tion, was evidently intended as a clincher. 
Kangaroos, indeed! That worthy Scotchman, 
our squatter host, hospitable to a fault, and 
shrewd as ever a North Briton could be, was 
full of the subject from quite another point of 
view. Kangaroos were no attraction to Aim. 
“The emigrant agent at home,” he said, 
helping himself to another banana, ‘‘ seems to 
think the kangaroo a blessing. We, unfor- 
tunately, know it to be a curse. I have gone 
closely into the figures of the whole question, 
and can prove to you that every 1,000 kanga- 
roos rob 2,000 sheep of grass, and this, at the 
present rate of wool, means a loss of 400 /. 
every year.” 
“ But,” said a member of the Legislative 
Assembly—smacking to sudden death a blood- 
* thirsty mosquito that had settled on the back 
of his hand, and was rapidly filling out until its 
small body resembled a bead of crimson glass 
—“‘ but the Government are taking the question 
up. They have passed a bill according to 
which ninepence will be paid for every 
kangaroo scalp and sixpence for every wallaby.” 
‘‘Aye, and that is very good so far as it 
goes,” rejoined the master, “ but I was taught 
in dear auld Aberdeenshire that the best way 
to do a thing is to do it yourself. Why, sir, 
last month we had a three days’ battue, and 
killed 3,000 marsupials, and if we have luck we 
shall shoot our thousand head to-morrow. 
And, in truth, a very pleasant prospect it 
was. None of your wearisome walking for 
hours over mountain and glen for the bare 
glimpse of a stag which winds you every time 
you get within range. None of the perils ot 
the tiger hunt in Indian jungles. Nay, none ot 
the sickening brutality of the fashionable 
pigeon match. Here was an almost certainty 
of safe, plentiful sport, and, withal, the 
consciousness that you were all the time doing 
a work of necessity, and giving assistance to a 
worthy man whose theory in life had always 
been that heaven loves to help them who help 
themselves. 
A loss of 400 7. every year? Well might 
one of us, as we went out to the verandah to 
smoke our pipes, gaze at the lovely purple tints 
stealing over the mountains, and become 
dreamy as the glorious stars of the southern 
hemisphere came out almost simultaneously 
with the sunset, exclaim, in the words of a 
never-forgotten favorite, ‘Four hundred 
pounds! Ma conscience !” 
Our friend Cameron was adopting a wise 
course. The colony was in the midst of a 
terrible drought. Riding up to Glenlorne—the 
Australian colonies abound with sheep and 
cattle-runs bearing the name of some well- 
remembered scene of home—I had seen 
bullocks perishing and perished for lack of food 
and water, dying, perhaps, in the oozy mud of 
a nearly dried-up waterhole, having insufficient 
strength to extricate themselves. The heavens 
were as brass, the earth as iron. The grass 
was yellow, and dry as tinder, and ugly 
fissures were gaping in the parched earth. In 
the course of six hours I passed a dozen bush- 
fires. At such a time the kangaroos, driven 
from their mountain retreats, had advanced 
boldly to the haunts of civilization, and were, 
as the saying went, ‘‘eating up the country.” 
With a good heart, therefore, I uprose at 
dawn, and joined the band of hunters gathered 
for an organized attack on the enemy. To the 
half-a-dozen of us who were Cameron's guests 
at Glenlorne were now added neighbors, who 
had ridden in from a radius of twenty miles. 
In that sparsely populated country, where one 
