Beautiful As The Scene Always Was, It Struck Me That Day As Being Of
Unusual Splendour.
The tall gum-trees, with their naked stems, and curious
hanging leaves that exasperate the heated traveller by throwing the
scantiest of shadows, glistened dew-beaded in the rising sun.
The laughing
jackass, perched upon a bare limb, was awaking the forest echoes with his
insane fits of laughter, alternating from a good-humoured chuckle to the
frenzied ravings of a despairing maniac. Suddenly ceasing, he would dart
down upon some hapless lizard, too early astir for its own safety, and,
with his writhing prey in his bill, would fly to some other branch, and
after swallowing his captive, burst forth into a yell of self-gratulation
even-more fiendish than before. The delicate little "paddy melon," a small
species of kangaroo, turned his gracefully-formed little head, beautiful as
a fawn's, and, startled at the strange figure in the verandah, stood
hesitatingly for a few seconds, and then, bending forward, bounded into the
scrub, the noise caused by the flapping of its tail being audible long
after the little animal itself was lost to sight. The white cockatoos,
alarmed by the outcry of the sentry - for, like the English rooks, they
always tell off some of their number to keep a look-out - who with
sulphur-coloured crest, erect and outstretched neck, kept up a constant cry
of warning, rose from the maize patch, the spotless white of their plumage
glancing in the sun, and forming a beautiful contrast to the pale
straw-colour of the under portion of their extended pinions.
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