“Why, Davy, there’s plenty of salt right before your face.  Did you never try ashes?  Mix a spoonful with your egg this way, and you’ll find you don’t want no better salt.”

“Right you are, Jack; it goes down grand,” said Davy, after seasoning and eating one egg.  Then to the boys, “Here you kids, take some eggs and roast ’em and salt ’em with ashes, and then take your sticks and try if you can knock down a few parrots or wattle birds for dinner.  But don’t you go far from the camp, and keep a sharp look-out for the blacks; for you can never trust ’em, and they might poke their spears through you.”

“But, Davy,” asked Jack, “where is the port and the shipping, and where are all the settlers?  There don’t seem to be many people stirring about here this morning.”

“Port and shipping be blessed,” said Davy; “and as for the settlers, there are only about half-a-dozen left, with these two boys and my wife, and Hannah Scutt.  We don’t keep no regular watch, and meal-times is of little use unless there’s something to eat.  I landed here from that whale-boat on the 30th of last May, and I have been waiting for you ever since.  In a few weeks we had about a hundred and fifty people camped here.  They came mostly in cutters from Melbourne, looking for work or looking for runs.  They said men were working for half-a-crown a day without rations on the road between Liardet’s beach and the town.  But there was no work for them here; and, as their provisions soon ran short, they had to go away or starve.  I stopped here, and have been starving most of the time.  Some went back in the cutters and some overland.

“Brodribb and Hobson came here over the mountains with four Port Phillip blacks, and they decided to look for a better way by the coast.  I landed them and their four blacks at the head of Corner Inlet.  They were attacked by the Western Port blacks near the River Tarwin, but they frightened them away by firing their guns.  The four Port Phillip blacks who were carrying the ammunition and provisions ran away too; and the two white men had nothing to eat for two or three days until they made Massey and Anderson’s station on the Bass, where they found their runaway blacks.

“William Pearson and his party were the next who left the Port.  They took the road over the mountains, and lived on monkey bears until they reached Massey and Anderson’s.

“McClure, Scott, Montgomery, and several other men started next.  They had very little of their provisions left when I landed them one morning at One Tree Hill there over the water.  They were fourteen days tramping over the mountains, and were so starved that they ate their own dogs.  They came back in a schooner, but I think some of them will never get over that journey.  I tell you, Jack, it’s hard to make a start in a new country with no money, no food, and no live stock, except Scott’s old horse and that lame deerhound.  Poor Ossian was a good dog, and used to run down