BLACK SWAN 
119 
the ground fell sharply away to the lignum-lined 
margin of Connewarre, whose waters stretched far 
and wide in front to where, miles away to southward, 
the gleam of yellow sand-hills marked the outside 
sea. Flanked with wooded hills to left and right, 
the glassy lake would have been beautiful enough 
under that cloud-flecked sky of itself alone ; but our 
boyish vision was closest held by the bird-life that 
thronged the broad expanse. 
In lines, companies, and great hosts the lordly 
swans sat upon the water, their long necks now held 
upright and now bent beneath the surface in search 
of food from the weed-grown bottom. Some swam 
slowly about, and even as we looked a whole dusky 
squadron rose with a clamour of feet and beating 
wings. And when that had ceased, all the summer 
air was still haunted by the wild and flute-like song 
of the Black Swan, notes which from that day to this 
I cannot hear but there rises up clear before me, 
out of the delicate mists of boyhood, the happy 
memory of a perfect bush day. I do not know how 
many thousands of Swan we saw — probably not so 
many as in our excited little minds we thought ; I 
only know that they dotted the water everywhere, 
and that we hardly heeded the mobs of Duck and Coot 
which shared the scene with their more stately 
neighbours. 
Never having found a Swan's nest on Connewarre 
myself, I, some time since, asked a veteran Duck- 
shooter if he liad ever done so. His reply was that 
