m returned without a supply of my favourite water-
lily buds already mentioned. Often, in the years that followed, did that
heroic creature _tramp on foot a hundred miles_ to get me a few sprigs of
saline herbs. She had heard me say I wanted salt, which commodity,
strange to say, was never used by the natives; and even when I gave them
some as an experiment they did not seem to care about it. She would also
bring in, by way of seasoning, a kind of small onion, known as the
_nelga_, which, when roasted, made a very acceptable addition to our
limited fare. The natives themselves had but two meals a day--breakfast,
between eight and nine o'clock, and then an enormous feast in the late
afternoon. Their ordinary food consisted of kangaroo, emu, snakes, rats,
and fish; an especial dainty being a worm found in the black ava tree, or
in any decaying trunk.

These worms were generally grilled on hot stones, and eaten several at a
time like small whitebait. I often ate them myself, and found them most
palatable. After breakfast the women of the tribe would go out hunting
roots and snaring small game for the afternoon meal, while the men went
off on their war and hunting expeditions, or amused themselves with feats
of arms. The children were generally left to their own devices in the
camp, and the principal amusement of the boys appeared to be the hurling
of reed spears at one another. The women brought home the roots (which
they dug up with yam sticks, generally about four feet long) in nets made
out of the stringy parts of the grass tree; stringy bark, or strong
pliable reeds, slung on their all-enduring backs. They generally
returned heavily laden between two and three in the afternoon. I always
knew the time pretty accurately by the sun, but I lost count of the days.
The months, however, I always reckoned by the moon, and for each year I
made a notch on the inside of my bow.

My own food was usually wrapped in palm leaves before being placed in the
sand oven. Of course the leaves always burned, but they kept the meat
free from sand; and my indefatigable wife was always exercising her
ingenuity to provide me with fresh dainties. In addition to the ordinary
fare of the natives, I frequently had wild ducks and turkeys, and--what
was perhaps the greatest luxury of all--eggs, which the natives sent for
specially on my account to distant parts of the surrounding country, and
also to the islands of the coast where white