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. Mr. Browne shot one: certainly
it is a most extraordinary animal; a stuffed specimen does not
at all give a good idea of the appearance of the head and beak
when fresh; the latter becoming hard and contracted.
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