NATURE'S REALM. 69 
‘register 100° in the shade could not penetrate. 
Of bread and damper there was no stint ; cold 
boiled beef, in joints and pieces of the cut-and- 
come-again order, was plentiful. Tea, strong, 
fragrant, and sweet, we brewed in buckets 
over the camp fire, and drank without milk, 
after the fashion of all orthodox bushman, 
dipping our pannikins, which each man had 
brought strapped to his saddle, into the com- 
mon pail. 
Our sheath-knives were our sole cutlery, and 
crockeryware troubled us not. Talk of lord 
mayor's feasts! Blessed indeed would be 
lord mayors, aldermen, and all people com- 
mitted to their charge if they could relish their 
food as we relished that unpretentious repast in 
the Australian forest. True, there were a few 
mosquitoes about. One venerable gentleman 
leaped with surprising agility to his feet after 
being nipped rudely by the forceps of a bull- 
dog-ant upon which he had innocently sat; 
and attention, as the feast drew near its close, 
was called to a disagreeable-looking iguana 
over a yard long, which had been watching us 
from one of the upper branches of a tree, and 
which dropped very dead to a salute from 
Billy Barlow's single-barrelled gun. Billy 
carefully selected certain fatty portions to 
which he had in his piccaninny days been 
taught to ascribe almost supernatural curative 
powers. 
With the breaking up of the drought I may 
mention as a postscript, the plague of marsup- 
ials moderated, but as the bonuses for scalps 
were also reduced in value the energetic 
measures which had been entered into for the 
destruction of kangaroos were allowed to lapse. 
The natural timidity of the animal as a rule 
ensures its retreat before civilization, and the 
colonist who does not travel into the bush sees 
but little of the singular animal which so as- 
tonished Captain Cook and his merry men. 
But the danger from the millions of marsupials 
which still exist is such that in some badly- 
infested districts the landholders were not long 
since warned by the local authorities that, it 
they did not destroy them, they would be de- 
stroyed by officially-employed men at their (the 
landholders’) expense. Pastoral lessees should 
adopt Sandy Cameron's principles, for, at 
Glenlorne, the nuisance was, after my visit, 
reduced to a minimum by his vigorous on- 
slaughts, made on that grand self-help prin- 
ciple which has given him a fortune beyond 
the dreams ot avarice. 
