a native of this country, would be up to
the ways of the people, and might assist in the discovery.

After some hours passed in rambling over the black ashes of several
villages that had been burned, they discovered a hollow place, by
sounding the earth with a stick, and, upon digging, arrived at a granary
of the seed known as "tullaboon;" this was a great prize, as, although
mouldy and bitter, it would keep us from starving. The women of the
party were soon hard at work grinding, as many of the necessary stones
had been found among the ruins.

Fortunately there were three varieties of plants growing wild in great
profusion, that, when boiled, were a good substitute for spinach; thus
we were rich in vegetables, although without a morsel of fat or animal
food. Our dinner consisted daily of a mess of black porridge of bitter
mouldy flour that no English pig would condescend to notice, and a large
dish of spinach. "Better a dinner of herbs where love is," etc. often
occurred to me; but I am not sure that I was quite of that opinion after
a fortnight's grazing upon spinach.

Tea and coffee were things of the past, the very idea of which made
our months water; but I found a species of wild thyme growing in the
jungles, and this when boiled formed a tolerable substitute for tea.
Sometimes our men procured a little wild honey, which added to the thyme
tea we considered a great luxury.

This wretched fare, in our exhausted state from fever and general
effects of climate, so completely disabled us that for nearly two months
my wife lay helpless on one angarep, and I upon the other. Neither of
us could walk. The hut was like all in Kamrasi's country, with a perfect
forest of thick poles to support the roof (I counted thirty-two); thus,
although it was tolerably large, there was but little accommodation.
These poles we now found very convenient, as we were so weak that we
could not rise from bed without lifting ourselves up by one of the
supports.

We were very nearly dead, and our amusement was a childish conversation
about the good things in England, and my idea of perfect happiness was
an English beefsteak and a bottle of pale ale; for such a luxury I would
most willingly have sold my birthright at that hungry moment. We were
perfect skeletons, and it was annoying to see how we suffered upon the
bad fare, while our men apparently throve. There were plenty of wild red
peppers, and the men seemed to enjoy a mixture of porrid