of ensnaring animals or
birds. These were wide enough at the entrance to admit a person without
much difficulty; but tapering away gradually from the entrance to the
end, and terminating in a small wickered grate. It was between forty and
fifty feet in length; on each side the earth was thrown up; and the whole
was constructed of weeds, rushes, and brambles: but so well secured, that
an animal once within it could not possibly liberate itself. We supposed
that the prey, be it beast or bird, was hunted and driven into this toil;
and concluded, from finding one of them destroyed by fire, that they
force it to the grated end, where it is soon killed by their spears. In
one I saw a common rat, and in another the feathers of a quail.

By the sides of lagoons I have met with holes which, on examining, were
found excavated for some space, and their mouths so covered over with
grass, that a bird or beast stepping on it would inevitably fall in, and
from its depth be unable to escape.

In an excursion to the Hawkesbury, we fell in with a native and his child
on the banks of one of the creeks of that noble river. We had Cole-be
with us, who endeavoured, but in vain, to bring him to a conference; he
launched his canoe, and got away as expeditiously as he could, leaving
behind him a specimen of his food and the delicacy of his stomach; a
piece of water-soaked wood (part of the branch of a tree) full of holes,
the lodgment of a large worm, named by them cah-bro, and which they
extract and eat; but nothing could be more offensive than the smell of
both the worm and its habitation. There is a tribe of natives dwelling
inland, who, from the circumstance of their eating these loathsome worms,
are named Cah-bro-gal.

They resort at a certain season of the year (the month of April) to the
lagoons, where they subsist on eels which they procure by laying hollow
pieces of timber into the water, into which the eels creep, and are
easily taken.

These wood natives also make a paste formed of the fern-root and the
large and small ant bruised together; in the season they also add the
eggs of this insect.

APPENDIX V--COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

How will the refined ear of gallantry be wounded at reading an account of
the courtship of these people! I have said that there was a delicacy
visible in the manners of the females. Is it not shocking then to think
that the prelude to love in this country should be violence? Yet such it
is, and o