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284 company should repair to Perth, to acquaint their bishop with their necessitous condition. Father Salvado accordingly set out upon the journey, accompanied as far as Captain Scully's house by a native: the wayfarers subsisting as they went along on such food as the bush could afford; whether this consisted of opossums, or grubs, or lizards, which last when roasted are described as "dainty morsels," "I must acknowledge, for the honour of the truth," says the Father, "that the good savage always gave me the larger half."

The grubs to which allusion is made much resemble, if they are not identical with, the groo groo grub of the West Indies, and are found in "blackboy" trees by the natives and other knowing persons, who pronounce the flavour to be almost equal to that of beef marrow. I never saw but one of these creatures; it was white, of the thickness of a finger and about as long, and I fully believe Father Salvado's statement, that his stomach "writhed" over the swallowing of them. Whilst we lived in Barladong, we saw two or three moths which were quite as large as common English bats, but whether or no they were of the kind into which these grubs turn we had no means of ascertaining.

Arrived at Captain Scully's the Father was presented with supplies which rendered him independent of grubs for the remainder of his road; nevertheless his friendly native here turned back lest his wife, as he said, should be stolen in his absence. A truer reason would perhaps have been that he dreaded being killed by natives to whom he was unknown; for as game is the only means of subsistence in the bush it is jealously preserved, and