On An Austral Beach. 
H3 
suddenly, and rushing down to the sea had met 
the incoming spring tide, and every wave that 
broke upon the shore left some hundredweights 
of stranded prawns behind it, where they re¬ 
mained to be devoured by the gulls and divers 
and the vast bodies of fish which, when the tide 
again rose, were enabled to ascend to the higher 
parts of the beach. The greater number of 
these delicious crustaceans were still alive, only 
those which had been washed apart from the 
thicker masses and ridges of the others having 
succumbed to the rays of the sun. Sandy had 
come prepared, for he now dismounted and 
began to fill a sugar-bag with them. Prawn 
soup, he told us, was “ verra good.” Also he 
observed that if he could only get but one-half 
of these masses of prawns up to Sydney market 
they would be worth ^25 to him, and that was 
more than he could make by three months’ 
hard work at beach-mining. Before we mounted 
again we watched our chance and picked up 
nearly a dozen of stranded garfish ; these 
Sandy popped into the bag on top of the 
prawns. 
For another mile or two we rode slowly along 
the hard, unyielding sand, till we came in sight 
