On our way we met a party of natives engaged in burning the bush, which they do in sections every year.  The dexterity with which they manage so proverbially a dangerous agent as fire is indeed astonishing.  Those to whom this duty is especially entrusted, and who guide or stop the running flame, are armed with large green boughs, with which, if it moves in a wrong direction, they beat it out.  Their only object in these periodical conflagrations seems to be the destruction of the various snakes, lizards, and small kangaroos, called wallaby, which with shouts and yells they thus force from their covert, to be despatched by the spears or throwing-sticks of the hunting division.  The whole scene is a most animated one, and the eager savage, every muscle in action and every faculty called forth, then appears to the utmost advantage, and is indeed almost another being.  I can conceive no finer subject for a picture than a party of these swarthy beings engaged in kindling, moderating, and directing the destructive element, which under their care seems almost to change its nature, acquiring, as it were, complete docility, instead of the ungovernable fury we are accustomed to ascribe to it.  Dashing through the thick underwood, amidst volumes of smoke—­their dark active limbs and excited features burnished by the fierce glow of the fire—­they present a spectacle which it rarely falls to our lot to behold, and of which it is impossible to convey any adequate idea by words.

COURSE A KANGAROO.

After tethering out our horses and making our breakwind for the night, we went out in the evening to look for a kangaroo.  I had never as yet seen one put fairly at his speed on open ground before a dog, but this evening I was fully gratified; for we soon found a couple lying out on our side of the plain, and by crawling up through the wood we managed to slip the dogs about five hundred yards from them.  Away they went, leaving a stream of dust in their wake.  Their habitual curving direction soon gave us a broadside view; and a splendid course it was.  They ran horizontally, no leap or hop being perceptible.  At first the dogs closed rapidly, but for some time afterwards no change in their relative positions took place, each doing his best.  The kangaroos held their own well, until they had reached nearly the other side of the plain, a distance of about two miles, when the dogs began gradually to draw on them, and at length, after a turn or two, the smaller was run into just before entering the wood.  It was a fine young buck, weighing about 60 pounds, and made a capital supper for our party.  The natives cooked the tail for us in their own way, roasting it with the hair on, the best mode of dressing it, except in soup.