ible from
our elevated position; for it was evident that the range we had
ascended terminated in an abrupt precipice on the river, that we could
not have passed. The blacks suffered beyond what I could have imagined,
from cold, and seemed as incapable of enduring it as if they had
experienced the rigour of a northern snow storm.

The morning of the 2nd December was cloudy and lowering, and the wind
still hung in the N.W. There was truly every appearance of bad weather,
but our anxiety to proceed on our journey overcame our apprehensions,
and the animals were loaded and moved off at 7 a.m. The rain which had
fallen the evening previous, rendered travelling heavy; so that we got
on but slowly. At 11, the clouds burst, and continued to pour down for
the rest of the day. On leaving the creek we crossed the spine of the
range, and descending from it into a valley, that continued to the
river on the one hand, and stretched away to the N.W. on the other, we
ascended some hills opposite to us, and moved generally through open,
undulating forest ground, affording good pasturage.

SMOKING AN OPOSSUM.

One of the blacks being anxious to get an opossum out of a dead tree,
every branch of which was hollow, asked for a tomahawk, with which he
cut a hole in the trunk above where he thought the animal lay
concealed. He found however, that he had cut too low, and that it had
run higher up. This made it necessary to smoke it out; he accordingly
got some dry grass, and having kindled a fire, stuffed it into the hole
he had cut. A raging fire soon kindled in the tree, where the draft was
great, and dense columns of smoke issued from the end of each branch as
thick as that from the chimney of a steam engine. The shell of the tree
was so thin that I thought it would soon be burnt through, and that the
tree would fall; but the black had no such fears, and, ascending to the
highest branch, he watched anxiously for the poor little wretch he had
thus surrounded with dangers and devoted to destruction; and no sooner
did it appear, half singed and half roasted, than he seized upon it and
threw it down to us with an air of triumph. The effect of the scene in
so lonely a forest, was very fine. The roaring of the fire in the tree,
the fearless attitude of the savage, and the associations which his
colour and appearance, enveloped as he was in smoke, called up, were
singular, and still dwell on my recollection. We had not long left the
tree, when i