former is the flesh of wild animals, and, as I have already shown, her hand has been so niggardly of any other food, that a vegetarian would probably find less in common between himself and an Australian, than with the inhabitants of any other part of the world. The climate itself seems to make the eating of meat a constitutional necessity, especially during the intense heats of summer, when, instead of the appetite for animal food being diminished, meat becomes more than ever palatable, so that in every settler's house it is put upon the table three times a day.
The school broke down, and had come to an end about ten years before we went to live in Barladong. A friend of ours once met a native woman who said that she had been one of the runaways, and held up her fingers eagerly to count upon them the number of children who had died. "Black fellow die—black fellow die," said she, as she touched one finger after another in the reckoning; "me run away—'fraid die too." Having finished her return of deaths, she went on to say "Black fellow sick—white lady fowl sendum—white lady kangaroo sendum—master all self eatum—" but here she paused and made an exception in favour of the matron, expressed by the words "Missis not eatum—missis good fellow."
This was all that we ever learned of the Barladong Wesleyan Mission, and we were never able to find any printed account of it, though we were told that there had been one in a Wesleyan magazine, headed with an engraving of the school side by side with a chapel, which was probably a stock frontispiece to missionary reports in
