WATER FROM ROOTS. 
351 
tomed to travel through arid regions, can remain 
any length of time out in a country where there are 
no indications of water. The circumstance of natives 
being seen, in travelling through an unknown dis- 
trict, is therefore no proof of the existence of water 
in their vicinity. I have myself observed, that no 
part of the country is so utterly worthless, as not to 
have attractions sufficient occasionally to tempt the 
wandering savage into its recesses. In the arid, 
barren, naked plains of the north, with not a shrub 
to shelter him from the heat, not a stick to burn for 
his fire (except what he carried with him), the native 
is found, and where, as far as I could ascertain, the 
whole country around appeared equally devoid of 
either animal or vegetable life. In other cases, the 
very regions, which, in the eyes of the European, are 
most barren and worthless, are to the native the 
most valuable and productive. Such are dense 
brushes, or sandy tracts of country, covered with 
shrubs, for here the wallabie, the opossum, the 
kangaroo rat, the bandicoot, the leipoa, snakes, 
lizards, iguanas, and many other animals, reptiles, 
birds, &c., abound ; whilst the kangaroo, the emu, 
and the native dog, are found upon their borders, or 
in the vicinity of those small, grassy plains, which 
are occasionally met with amidst the closest brushes. 
