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 had seen before across the
river. Ah! ah! it was 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.

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 eight inches
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's bosom, and eats a leaf as they go along; while
his mother sits aloft, and grunts indignant at the abstraction of her
offspring, but, on the whole, takes it pretty comfortably, and goes on
with her dinner of peppermint leaves.

What a short day it has been! Here is the sun getting low, and the
magpies and jackasses beginning to tune up before roosting.

He would turn and go back to the river. Alas! which way?

He was lost in the bush. He turned back and went, as he thought, the
way he had come, but soon arrived at a tall, precipitous cliff, which,
by some infernal magic, seemed to have got between him and the river.
Then he broke down, and that strange madness came on him which comes
even on strong men when lost in the forest: a despair, a confusion of
intellect, which cost many a bold man his life. Think what it must be
with a child.

He was fully persuaded that the cliff was between him and home, and
that he must climb it. Alas! every step he took aloft carried him
further from the river and the hope of safety; and when he came to the