Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/184

 158 church, forming nearly one side of a handsome square. We are getting on.

15th.—The men have finished the wheat sowing, dibbling it in with forks, and I have shot a whole brood of teal on the river. The Cornwallis has arrived with wheat, flour, potatoes, and eighty-five sheep; the latter engaged by Mr. McDermot at 25s. a head. I have offered to give two bullocks.

18th. This has been a day of unintermitting rain, and the swelling of the river indicates a storm from the N.W. Probably the wind impels the sea into the river before we perceive its force; and thus the rising of the water, which appears to us as the prognostic of the N.W. wind, is in reality but the effect. Being prevented by the badness of the weather from going out, I have been engaged in building occupations within, and amused at the gambol motions of a little kangaroo, which I took the other day out of its mother's pouch as she was running from a hunting party. The poor little thing attaches itself to my foot, and hops along with me wherever I go; "passibus æquis;" its bed is in my old cloth slipper. Apropos, an arrival of shoes from Van Diemen's Land.

21st.—A passing traveller called out this morning that there was a turkey in the plain above. Such a hint was not to be despised; three of us accordingly sallied out, just in time to see the bird flying away. We followed, and