ed to seem inattentive or insensible to whatever people might be
doing around them.*

(*Footnote. This custom is not peculiar to Australia, it prevailed also
in the East:

"A melancholy choir attend around,
With plaintive sighs, and music's solemn sound:
Alternately they sing, alternate flow
The obedient tears, melodious in their woe." Pope's Iliad, Book 24 verse
900.

The note here is: "This was a custom generally received, and which passed
from the Hebrews to the Greeks, Romans, and Asiatics. There were weepers
by profession, of both sexes, who sung doleful tunes round the dead."
Harmer Volume 3 page 31.

It is admitted by all that this last practice obtained, and the following
passages are proofs of it. Jeremiah 9:17, 18. "Call for the mourning
women that they may come, and let them make haste, and take up a wailing
for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out
with waters." Idem. pages 33 to 36.)

At the time however this behaviour of the natives only made us more on
our guard, and impressed the men with a sense of the necessity for
vigilance, especially during the night when a watch was set on the
cattle, and two men guarded the camp, while all the rest slept with their
arms at hand.

This day two of the dogs fell behind, and as the whole were miserably
poor we at first supposed that these had died from exhaustion; but as the
weaker of the two came up to us in the evening it appeared then more
probable that the dogs had been detained by the natives, who might be
following our track, and that this one had escaped from them.

DOG KILLED BY A SNAKE.

February 11.

On the march this morning we lost an excellent little watch-dog, named
Captain, by the bite of a snake. While the other dogs with the party grew
mere skeletons, Captain continued in good case, having fared very well on
the rats, mice, bandicoots, etc. which he, under the direction of The
Doctor, who shared the prey, had the sagacity to scrape out of the earth.
Captain was also a formidable enemy to lizards, et hoc genus omne; but
this morning his owner found him engaged with that venomous reptile known
in the colony by the name of deaf-adder, and although compelled instantly
to let it go, it was too late, for poor Captain stretched out his legs
and expired on the spot, having been already bitten by the poisonous
reptile.

BIRDS NESTS.

We repassed this day the place where only I had seen that bush of the
interior, t