The men had cooked one spoonful of flour each in the liquid mud which the pool afforded, and assured me that they found this thick water very nourishing; whence I concluded that the large portion of mud it contained in some degree gratified the cravings of the stomach.  Kaiber soon plucked the cockatoo and roasted it:  I gave him the entrails, the feet, and the first joint of the legs, eating the head and thighs myself and reserving the other portions as a store against future emergencies.  I now felt assured that my life was saved and, rendering thanks to God for his many mercies, I laid down by the fire to watch for the first appearance of dawn.

April 18.

The men slept but little during the night:  every now and then one of them visited the hole of mud and water to see if a little of this fluid had drained into it, and about an hour before daylight I roused them up to proceed upon their journey.  They were dreadfully feeble though upon the whole stronger than they had been for the last three days.  We now entered upon a more hilly country than we had traversed yesterday; the hills were steep, being composed of sand and recent limestone, whilst the valleys were thickly wooded with grass-trees and stunted Banksias.  The general line of route I followed was south by east, and we had not travelled more than nine miles when we came suddenly upon a valley with a river running rapidly through it.  The sight of this cheered us up; and when on tasting the water we found it excellent, and saw adhering to the banks a species of freshwater mussel (Unio) called by the natives Maraylya, our joy was complete.

Superstitious feelings of Kaiber regarding mussels.

I proceeded therefore to collect wood for my fire and ordered Kaiber to make haste and gather some of these mussels, an order which, considering the hungry state he was in, I imagined he would gladly have obeyed; but to my astonishment he refused positively to touch one of them, and evidently regarded them with a superstitious dread and abhorrence.  My arguments to induce him to move were all thrown away; he constantly affirmed that if he touched these shellfish through their agency the Boyl-yas* would acquire some mysterious influence over him, which would end in his death.  He could not state a recent instance of any ill effects having happened from handling or catching the mussel; but when I taunted him with this he very shrewdly replied that his inability to do so only arose from the fact of nobody being “wooden-headed enough” to meddle with them, and that he intended to have nothing whatever to do with them.  This much he assured me was certain:  that a very very long time ago some natives had eaten them, and that bad spirits had immediately killed them for so doing.

(Footnote.  The Boyl-ya is the native sorcerer.)