either broils them on the fire, or cooks them by cutting them into small
pieces, and spitting them on a pointed stick.

Other natives, attracted by the flaming signal of revelry, soon assemble
in gay companies from all quarters: by night they dance and sing, and by
day they eat and sleep, and the feast continues unchecked until they at
last fairly eat their way into the whale, and may be seen climbing in
and about the carcase choosing their favourite pieces. The fish, in a
few days, becomes more disagreeable than ever, but still they will not
leave it, until they have been completely gorged with it,--out of temper
from indigestion, and therefore engaged in frequent quarrels. And, even
when they are, at length, obliged to quit the feast, they carry off with
them as much as they can stagger under, to eat upon the way, and to take
as a rarity to their distant friends. Such is a true picture of a native
Australian feast, and the polished sons and daughters of Europe will
turn away from it with feelings of unmingled disgust. But, with how many
of these is life itself a perpetual series of feasting, less gross and
disgusting indeed, but not less really sensual than this! How many
inhabitants of civilised countries live continually as though the
saying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" were the whole sum
and substance of practical wisdom! Yet if it were so, who would be more
happy, who more blessed in his situation, than the savage devouring, day
after day, the food his heart delights in?

But a whale-feast is an event of no ordinary kind in the life of an
inhabitant of the Bush, and, if we would know how the common sustenance
of life is procured by him, we must follow him through a variety of
scenes and pursuits, of which, by no means the least important or
interesting, is the chase of the kangaroo.[47] This singular and
harmless creature is now so well known to Europeans, from specimens that
have been brought over and placed in our public collections of animals,
and also from numberless pictures, that it would be waste of time to
stop to describe it. In truth, being one of the productions peculiar to
Australia, it may be said, from the figures of it to be seen upon the
back of every book relating to that country, to have become almost the
_kobong_ or crest of that southern region. In many portions of New
Holland, particularly where the country is wooded and the soil tolerably
fertile, kangaroos are very abundant