48 
wylie’s disappointment. 
It was very vexing to lose a line when I had not many, 
but still more so to miss a fine fish that would have 
weighed fifteen or sixteen pounds. Being obliged 
to come back, I spent the remainder of the afternoon 
in preparing lines for the morrow. 
Towards evening Wylie returned gloomy and 
sulky, and without having fired a shot ; neither had 
he brought the horses up with him to water as I had 
requested him to do, and now it was too late to go 
for them, and they would have to be without water 
for the night. I w as vexed at this, and gave him a 
good scolding for his negligence, after which I en- 
deavoured to ascertain what had so thoroughly put 
him out of humour, for ordinarily he was one of the 
best tempered natives I had met with : a single 
sentence revealed the whole — “ The dogs had 
eaten the skin.” 
This observation came from the very bottom of 
his soul, and at once gave me an idea of the magni- 
tude of the disappointment he had sustained ; the 
fact was, upon leaving the camp in the morning he 
had taken a fires tick in his hand, and gone straight 
back to where we skinned the kangaroo on the 21st, 
with the intention of singeing off the hair and eating 
the skin, which had been left hanging over a bush. 
Upon his arrival he found it gone : the wild dogs 
had been beforehand with him and deprived him of 
the meal he expected ; hence his gloomy, discon- 
tented look upon his return. As yet I had not told 
him that I had been fishing ; but upon showing him 
