he sensation is new
to him.

But, meanwhile, there sat our child, barelegged, watching the forbidden
ground beyond the river. A fresh breeze was moving the trees, and making
the whole a dazzling mass of shifting light and shadow. He sat so still
that a glorious violet and red kingfisher perched quite close, and,
dashing into the water, came forth with a fish, and fled like a ray of
light along the winding of the river. A colony of little shell parrots,
too, crowded on a bough, and twittered and ran to and fro quite busily,
as though they said to him, "We don't mind you, my dear; you are quite
one of us."

Never was the river so low. He stepped in; it scarcely reached his
ankle. Now surely he might get across. He stripped himself, and,
carrying his clothes, waded through, the water never reaching his
middle, all across the long, yellow gravelly shallow. And there he
stood, naked and free, on the forbidden ground.

He quickly dressed himself, and began examining his new kingdom, rich
beyond his utmost hopes. Such quantongs, such raspberries, surpassing
imagination; and when tired of them, such fern boughs, six or eight feet
long! He would penetrate this region, and see how far it extended.

What tales he would have for his father to-night! He would bring him
here, and show him all the wonders, and perhaps he would build a new hut
over here, and come and live in it? Perhaps the pretty young lady, with
the feathers in her hat, lived somewhere here, too?

There! There is one of those children he has seen before across the
river. Ah! ah! it is not a child at all, but a pretty grey beast, with
big ears. A kangaroo, my lad; he won't play with you, but skips away
slowly, and leaves you alone.

[Illustration: "_A Kangaroo! A Snake! An Eagle!_"]

There is something like the gleam of water on that rock. A snake! Now a
sounding rush through the wood, and a passing shadow. An eagle! He
brushes so close to the child, that he strikes at the bird with a stick,
and then watches him as he shoots up like a rocket, and, measuring the
fields of air in ever-widening circles, hangs like a motionless speck
upon the sky; though, measure his wings across, and you will find he is
nearer fifteen feet than fourteen.

Here is a prize, though! A wee little native bear, barely a foot
long,--a little grey beast, comical beyond expression, with broad
flapped ears,--sits on a tree within reach. He makes no resistance, but
cuddles into the child'