Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/359

1770 these papers fall. For quadrupeds, birds, fish, etc., I shall say no more than that we had some time ago learned to eat every single species which came in our way; a hawk or a crow was to us as delicate, and perhaps a better-relished meal, than a partridge or pheasant to those who have plenty of dainties. We wanted nothing to recommend any food but its not being salt; that alone was sufficient to make it a delicacy. Shags, sea-gulls, and all that tribe of sea-fowl which are reckoned bad from their trainy or fishy taste, were to us an agreeable food: we did not at all taste the rankness, which no doubt has been and possibly will again be highly nauseous to us, whenever we have plenty of beef and mutton, etc.

Quadrupeds we saw but few, and were able to catch but few of those we did see. The largest was called by the natives kangooroo; it is different from any European, and, indeed, any animal I have heard or read of, except the jerboa of Egypt, which is not larger than a rat, while this is as large as a middling lamb. The largest we shot weighed 84 lbs. It may, however, be easily known from all other animals by the singular property of running, or rather hopping, upon only its hinder legs, carrying its fore-feet close to its breast. In this manner it hops so fast that in the rocky bad ground where it is commonly found, it easily beat my greyhound, who, though he was fairly started at several, killed only one, and that quite a young one. Another animal was called by the natives je-quoll; it is about the size of, and something like, a pole-cat, of a light brown, spotted with white on the back, and white under the belly. The third was of the opossum kind, and much resembled that called by De Buffon Phalanger. Of these two last I took only one individual of each. Bats here were many: one small one was much if not identically the same as that described by De Buffon under the name of Fer de cheval. Another sort was as large as, or larger than, a partridge; but of this species we were not fortunate enough to take one. We supposed it, however, to be the Rousette or Rougette of the same author. Besides these,