He quickly dressed himself, and began examining his new kingdom, rich beyond his utmost hopes.  Such quantongs, such raspberries, surpassing imagination; and when tired of them, such fern boughs, six or eight feet long!  He would penetrate this region, and see how far it extended.

What tales he would have for his father to-night!  He would bring him here, and show him all the wonders, and perhaps he would build a new hut over here, and come and live in it?  Perhaps the pretty young lady, with the feathers in her hat, lived somewhere here, too?

There!  There is one of those children he has seen before across the river.  Ah! ah! it is not a child at all, but a pretty gray beast with big ears.  A kangaroo, my lad; he won’t play with you, but skips away slowly, and leaves you alone.

There is something like the gleam of water on that rock.  A snake!  Now a sounding rush through the wood, and a passing shadow.  An eagle!  He brushes so close to the child, that he strikes at the bird with a stick, and then watches him as he shoots up like a rocket and, measuring the fields of air in ever-widening circles, hangs like a motionless speck upon the sky; though, measure his wings across, and you will find he is nearer fifteen feet than fourteen.

Here is a prize, though!  A wee little native bear, barely a foot long,—­a little gray beast, comical beyond expression, with broad flapped ears,—­sits on a tree within reach.  He makes no resistance, but cuddles into the child’s bosom, and eats a leaf as they go along; while his mother sits aloft and grunts indignant at the abstraction of her offspring, but on the whole takes it pretty comfortably, and goes on with her dinner of peppermint leaves.

What a short day it has been!  Here is the sun getting low, and the magpies and jackasses beginning to tune up before roosting.

He would turn and go back to the river.  Alas! which way?

He was lost in the bush.  He turned back and went, as he thought, the way he had come, but soon arrived at a tall, precipitous cliff, which by some infernal magic seemed to have got between him and the river.  Then he broke down, and that strange madness came on him, which comes even on strong men, when lost in the forest—­a despair, a confusion of intellect, which has cost many a man his life.  Think what it must be with a child!

He was fully persuaded that the cliff was between him and home, and that he must climb it.  Alas! every step he took aloft carried him further from the river, and the hope of safety; and when he came to the top, just at dark, he saw nothing but cliff after cliff, range after range, all around him.  He had been wandering through steep gullies all day unconsciously, and had penetrated far into the mountains.  Night was coming down, still and crystal clear, and the poor little lad was far away from help or hope, going his last long journey alone.