76 
Mr. T. Carter on some 
[Ibis, 
main facts. A distressing drought had been prevailing for 
two years, and I had been obliged to move all my stock, 
with much trouble and loss, from Point Cloates to the then 
virgin country on the west side of the Exmouth Gulf, only 
to have several hundred sheep poisoned by some unknown 
shrub, soon after reaching there. So I returned to the west 
side of the peninsula ranges with a native boy, in order to 
open out a “ soak ” or black-fellow's well, at which we had 
obtained enough water for our horses when driving the 
sheep up. The water was a few feet below the ground- 
surface in a dense patch of scrub, on rocky ground. The 
weather was intensely hot, and we found three putrid 
poisoned dingoes in the water-hole, so had to dig it out 
thoroughly before we could obtain any water to drink. 
It was not long before the boy smashed one of his big toes 
with a heavy sledge-hammer, so that he could not work, 
and I was picking and shovelling alone, in a very bad 
temper, when 1 heard some extraordinary chuckling noises 
in the scrub where the native was nursing his injured toe, 
so called out to him : u If you cannot work you need not 
make such idiotic .noises ” ; when he replied, “ That not me, 
that a bird.” So I jumped out of the hole to see what it 
was, and shot it, with my only firearm at the time—a *450 
Colt’s revolver—as it was creeping about in the scrub. 
It seemed to me to. tally with Clilamydera guttata , according 
to Gould’s Handbook, which, as usual, I had with me, when 
camping out. The bird of course was badly smashed, but 
I sent what was left of its skin to the Melbourne Museum 
for identification ; they informed me that only a mass of loose 
feathers had arrived. After I had finished making the well, 
where there was a splendid supply of good water, I moved 
most of my sheep back there ; but although I was camped 
there for several weeks, in which time I was constantly 
tramping the surrounding ranges, in order to shoot 
kangaroo, emu, etc., for food, no more of the birds 
were seen ; but when back at Point Cloates again in April 
the same year, I saw one of them in a deep rocky gorge 
among dense fig-trees, but did not shoot at it, hoping that 
