The
thoughtless aboriginal, blinded by these trifling advantages, is
delighted at the approach of the white man, who seems predestined
to inherit the country of his children.
Although having poor sport, we enjoyed a pleasant ride. The
woodland is generally so open that a person on horseback can gallop
through it. It is traversed by a few flat-bottomed valleys, which
are green and free from trees: in such spots the scenery was pretty
like that of a park. In the whole country I scarcely saw a place
without the marks of a fire; whether these had been more or less
recent--whether the stumps were more or less black, was the
greatest change which varied the uniformity so wearisome to the
traveller's eye. In these woods there are not many birds; I saw,
however, some large flocks of the white cockatoo feeding in a
corn-field, and a few most beautiful parrots; crows like our
jackdaws were not uncommon, and another bird something like the
magpie. In the dusk of the evening I took a stroll along a chain of
ponds, which in this dry country represented the course of a river,
and had the good fortune to see several of the famous
Ornithorhynchus paradoxus. They were diving and playing about the
surface of the water, but showed so little of their bodies that
they might easily have been mistaken for water-rats.
Pages:
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855