Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/156

138 bulls so liberally attributed to them: an instance of the ready application of a very whimsical metaphor amused me this morning.

"Hah, my joker," exclaimed Paddy Burn, as he drove a wedge home with peculiar effect into a large block of the tree. "Are you making him laugh, Paddy?" said Jack Galway. "Laugh, is it," rejoined Paddy, "by my troth I'm making him split his sides laughing." This is genuine humour.

Mr. Dermott has been here to-day, and wanted me to buy Van Diemen's Land sheep at £3 a piece. I am putting down about half a rood of maize (Indian corn) to try it once more, and shall have about a rood of Caffre corn; it will bring in the ground if it does nothing else. It is surprising how rapidly the ground here becomes baked on the top into a hard crust, which young vegetable fibres can scarcely penetrate. On raking and breaking it, we found several Indian corn shoots quite doubled under it, without being able to force their way through. Some of my strawberry plants are in blossom. My neighbours are brewing beer from sugar; less than one pound to a gallon will do; and have this article at 3d. to 4d. per lb. People talk of giving beer to servants instead of spirits, as the Government has seen the impolicy of forcing settlers to give regulated rations of spirits as well as of provisions.

27th.—The two Messrs. Burgess crossed the river here this morning, "kangarooing;" I accompanied them. We saw four kangaroos and five wallabees, and got three chases; but the dogs killed only one wallabee, weighing sixteen pounds.

28th.—The superstition which the ancients had about trees gushing out blood when pointed at by the axe, may have been originated from the observation, that gum trees emit, when wounded, a stream of reddish fluid of a consistence not unlike thick blood. I got a considerable quantity