all the sinews
of the tail attached to it, and these are drawn carefully out and at once
rolled round the dowuk, so as to keep them stretched: their future use is
either to sew cloaks and bags, or to make spears.

Two modes of cooking the kangaroo are common; the first is to make an
oven by digging a hole in the sand, in which a fire is lighted; when the
sand is well heated and a large heap of ashes is collected the hole is
scraped out and the kangaroo is placed in it, skin and all; it is then
covered over with ashes, and a slow fire is kept up above it; when
sufficiently baked it is taken out and laid upon its back; the first
incision is made directly down from between the forearms to the bottom of
the abdomen, the intestines are then removed, and the whole of the juice
or gravy is left in the body of the animal. This is carefully taken out
and the body is then cut up and eaten.

The other mode is simply to kill the kangaroo and then to broil the
different portions of it on the fire: certain parts are considered great
delicacies, and these the young men are forbidden to eat; such are the
blood, the entrails, and the marrow. The blood is always carefully
collected in one of the intestines so as to form a long sausage and is
afterwards eaten by the most influential man present.

METHODS OF TAKING AND COOKING FISH.

It will be seen from the foregoing list that the smaller sorts of fish
eaten by the natives are very numerous: there are however several kinds
which from superstitious prejudices they will not touch; amongst these
are the Bamba, or stingray. I should here observe that these prejudices
are local, and I have seen them reject at one portion of the continent
articles of food which at a distant part they will eat readily.

Three modes of taking fish are commonly practised: spearing them;
catching them by means of a weir; and taking them in a net. A party of
natives spearing fish in one of their large shallow estuaries is an
extremely picturesque sight; they follow all the tortuous windings of the
fish they are pursuing, as it darts about in the water, with great
rapidity; and, the object of their pursuit being concealed from a distant
spectator, they appear to be running about in the sea and dashing up the
foam for no conceivable cause or reason. Notwithstanding the speed they
are running with and the smallness of the object, in striking they rarely
miss their aim. In deep rivers or in the sea the mode of spea