he "coo-ee" or call of my natives. Fortunate
men! _they_ did not even understand what deafness meant. Lunacy also was
unknown among them, and such a thing as suicide no native can possibly
grasp or understand. In all my wanderings I only met one idiot or
demented person. He had been struck by a falling tree, and was
worshipped as a demi-god!

When the rats had passed by, we watched them enter a large creek and swim
across, after which they disappeared in the direction of some ranges
which were not very far away. They never seemed to break their ranks;
even when swimming, one beheld the same level brownish mass on the
surface of the water. Yamba told me that this migration of rats was not
at all uncommon, but that the creatures rarely moved about in such vast
armies as the one that had just passed.

I also learned that isolated parties of migrating rats were responsible
for the horrible deaths of many native children, who had, perhaps, been
left behind in camp by their parents, who had gone in search of water.

Up to this time we had always found food plentiful. On our southward
journey a particularly pleasant and convenient article of diet turned up
(or fell down) in the form of the _maru_, as it is called, which collects
on the leaves of trees during the night. Both in its appearance and
manner of coming, this curious substance may be likened to the manna that
fell in the wilderness for the benefit of the Israelites. This _maru_ is
a whitish substance, not unlike raw cotton in appearance. The natives
make bread of it; it is rather tasteless, but is very nutritious, and
only obtained at certain times--for example, it never falls at the time
of full moon, and is peculiar to certain districts.

During this great southward journey many strange things happened, and we
saw a host of curious sights. I only wish I could trust my memory to
place these in their proper chronological order.

We had several visitations of locusts; and on one occasion, some months
after leaving home, they settled upon the country around us so thickly as
actually to make a living bridge across a large creek. On several
occasions I have had to dig through a living crust of these insects, six
or eight inches thick, in order to reach water at a water-hole. These
locusts are of a yellowish-brown colour (many are grey), and they range
in length from two to four inches.

As they rise in the air they make a strange cracking, snapping sound