y of fishing and shooting, not alone for its
pleasures, but also because we were charged heavily for anything but
the ordinary salt beef, tea, sugar and flour. Sardines and tinned salmon
were luxuries we could not afford, but fresh fish and game were better,
and, even when salted, were preferrable to a continuous diet of beef.

We had among our stores a 250 lb. bag of coarse salt--we had to kill our
own meat and salt it down--and I proposed that we should at once set to
work whilst the weather was fine and spend a week shooting and fishing.
Such game as plain turkeys (the bustard), scrub turkeys, cockatoos,
ducks, &c., we could put in brine, whilst the fish could be drysalted
and then put in the sun to dry. Hansen quite approved the idea, and
we at once set to work. I was to be fisherman, and he the gunner;
for, curiously enough, my mate was the most helpless creatures with a
fishing-line or rod that I ever saw. In five minutes he would either
have his line hopelessly tangled, his rod broken, or his hook caught in
his hand; and yet he never lost his temper.

Taking with me two sturdy black boys as porters, and also bringing my
gun and ammunition in case of meeting duck, I set out on foot, Hansen
riding off, accompanied by a blackfellow, to a chain of shallow lagoons
five miles away.

Within a quarter of a mile from the house was a fine deep water-hole
formed by the creek being here confined between high banks. At one
end, however, an exposed bar of small, coarse round pebbles ran almost
across, and here I decided to begin, instead of from the bank, for not
only were snakes difficult to see in the undergrowth, but plants of
the dreaded stinging-tree were also growing around and between the
magnificent gums and the Leichhardts. These latter trees, named after
the ill-fated Dr. Leichhardt, are, I think, the most strikingly handsome
of all large trees in the north of Queensland. They love to grow near
or even in the water, and their broad, beautiful leaves give a welcome
shade.

But before I descended to the bank I had to remain for some minutes to
gaze on the beauty of the scene. The water at one end of the pool was of
the deepest blue, towards the pebbly bar it gradually shallowed, and
for the next eight or ten feet from the margin was as clear as crystal.
Close in under the banks the broad leaves of blue flowering water-lilies
covered the surface with a carpet of many shades of green and pink;
hovering above the lily