h its heavy wing.
Ha! what are all those carrion fowls congregated there for? Are they
battening on some dead carcase? O, hope--hope! there is the smell of
food upon the wind: up, man, up--battle with those birds, drive them
away, hew down that fierce white eagle with your axe; what right have
they to precious food, when man, their monarch, starves? So, the poor
emaciated culprit seized their putrid prey, and the scared fowls hovered
but a little space above, waiting instinctively for this new victim:
they had not left him much--it was a feast of remnants--pickings from
the skeleton of some small creature that had perished in the desert--a
wombat, probably, starved upon its travels; but a royal feast it was to
that famishing wretch: and, gathering up the remainder of those
priceless morsels, which he saved for some more fearful future, again he
crept upon his way. Still the same, night and day--day and night--for he
could only travel a league a-day: and at length, a shadowy line between
the sand and sky--far, far off, but circling the horizon as a bow of
hope. Shall it be a land of plenty, green, well-watered meadows, the
pleasant homes of man, though savage, not unfriendly? O hope,
unutterable! or is it (O despair!) another of those dreadful woods,
starving solitude under the high-arched gum-trees.

Onward he crept; and the line on the horizon grew broader and darker:
onward, still; he was exulting, he had conquered, he was bold and hard
as ever. He got nearer, now within some dozen miles; it was an
indistinct distance, but green at any rate; huzza--never mind
night-fall; he cannot wait, nor rest, with this Elysium before him: so
he toiled along through all the black night, and a friendly storm of
rain refreshed him, as his thirsty pores drank in the cooling stream.
Aha! by morning's dawn he should be standing on the edge of that green
paradise, fresh as a young lion, and no thanks to any one but his own
shrewd indomitable self.

Morning dawned--and through the vague twilight loomed some high and
tangled wall of green foliage, stretching seemingly across the very
world. Most sickening sight! a matted, thorny jungle, one of those
primeval woods again, but closer, thicker, darker than the park-like
one before; rank and prickly herbage in a rotting swamp, crowding up
about the stately trees. Must he battle his way through? Well, then, if
it must be so, he must and will; any thing rather than this hot and
blistering sand