chafing against each other in the wind during extremely hot weather, will evolve sufficient heat to produce flame. A fourth, and perhaps the most common cause of these conflagrations, may be found in those fires which every one, black or white, lights if he happens to rest for a few hours, or for the night, in the bush. It is, indeed, forbidden, under a penalty, to leave such fires burning when resuming the journey, but the law is very often disobeyed, and great mischief sometimes follows such neglect, especially in the summer. The sight of a traveller's fire, forsaken but still smouldering, would often set me thinking of the poor old people whom we had known in far-off English villages, shivering for want of fuel, whilst here lay such an abundance of it going to waste. As a set-off to my regrets on this account, there was nothing uncommon in our being asked to help poor families who had lost everything that they possessed through the destruction of their huts by bush-fires.
On one occasion, shortly before we came to the colony, a woman had gone to the well at a little distance from her hut to fetch water for ordinary household purposes; leaving her baby, which had been baptized that very morning, sleeping quietly in its cradle, whilst no one else was in the house. Having filled her pails she returned towards her home, and, on coming within sight of it, beheld the thatched roof in a blaze, and not a hope left of saving the poor little innocent, which was destroyed in a few moments.
A recent bush-fire imparts a peculiarly sombre look to the iron-rust colour of the red gum and mahogany trees, but, as time passes on, the gloomy appearance of their stems
