re most important at this point of my journey,
when a mournful song, strongly expressive of the wailing of women, came
from beyond the Darling, on the fitful breeze which still blew from the
north-west." The feelings of a brave but humane British officer,
surrounded by difficulties, with very few except convicts under his
command, annoyed by natives, yet anxious not to injure them, and just
about to turn back from the journey of discovery which he had hitherto
successfully pursued; the feelings of Major Mitchell under the
circumstances so touchingly described by him can scarcely be imagined.
The thoughts of a veteran who had served his country during many long
years of war and strife, must have wandered back to past scenes and
by-gone days, while he stood in that solitary wilderness; and when the
wild shrill cry of savage grief came floating upon his ears, he must
have felt most deeply those strange sensations which we experience

"When, musing o'er companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone."

These savages of the Darling have the power of doing with their toes
many things most surprising to men who wear shoes, and have never been
accustomed from infancy to climb trees after the Australian fashion.
With their toes they gather the fresh-water muscles from the muddy
bottoms of rivers or lakes, and these are one of their principal
articles of food in the neighbourhood of the Darling. In the attempts of
the Spitting Tribe to steal from the English party, their feet were much
employed, and they would tread softly on any article, seize it with the
toes, pass it up the back, or between the arm and side, and so conceal
it in the arm-pit, or between the beard and throat. The hoary old priest
of the Spitting Tribe, while intent upon tricks of this kind, chanted
an extraordinary hymn to some deity or devil; the act was evidently
superstitious and connected with no good principle. Arrangements were
probably being made, and some of these strange ceremonies observed by
them, for the purpose of destroying the strangers, _intruders_ they
might be called. "And no man," observes Major Mitchell, "can witness the
quickness and intelligence of the aborigines, as displayed in their
instant comprehension of our numerous appliances, without feelings of
sympathy. They cannot be so obtuse, as not to anticipate in the advance
of such a powerful race as ours, the extirpation of their own, in a
country which barely affords to them t