114 DEXTERITY OF NATIVES IN FISHING. 
procured fish was really surprising. They would slip, feet 
foremost, into the water as they walked along the bank 
of the river, as if they had accidentally done so, but, 
in reality, to avoid the splash they would necessarily 
have made if they had plunged in head foremost. As 
surely as they then disappeared under the surface of the 
water, so surely would they re-appear with a fish writhing 
upon the point of their short spears. The very otter 
scarcely exceeds them in power over the finny race, and so 
true is the aim of these savages, even under water, that 
all the fish we procured from them were pierced either 
close behind the lateral fin, or in the very centre of the 
head. It is certain, from their indifference to them, that 
the natives seldom eat fish when they can get anything 
else. Indeed, they seemed more anxious to take the small 
turtle, which, sunning themselves on the trunks or logs of 
trees over the water, were, nevertheless, extremely on their 
guard. A gentle splash alone indicated to us that any 
thing had dropped into the water, but the quick eyes 
and ears of our guides immediately detected what had 
occasioned it, and they seldom failed to take the poor little 
animal that had so vainly trusted to its own watchfulness 
for security. It appeared that the natives did not, fiom 
choice, frequent the Murray ; it was evident, therefore, that 
they had other and better means of subsistence away from 
it, and it struck me, at the time, that the liver we had 
just passed watered a better country than any through which 
the Murray had been found to flow. 
