Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/453

Rh

EFORE returning to the coast our friends had an opportunity to visit a native encampment and see a corroboree. The reader naturally asks what a corroboree is; we will see presently.

Arrangements were made by their host, and early one morning the party was off for the native encampment, which was nearly thirty miles away. A tent and provisions had been sent along the previous evening, so that the travellers had nothing to carry on their horses beyond a lunch, which they ate in a shepherd's hut at one of the out stations. Early in the afternoon they reached their tent, which had been pitched on the bank of a brook about half a mile from the village they intended to visit.

Taking an early dinner, they set out on foot for the encampment, being guided by a native who had come to escort them. We will let Frank tell the story of the entertainment.

"The village was merely a collection of huts of bark, open at one side, and forming a shelter against the wind, though it would have been hardly equal to keeping out a severe storm. To construct these huts the bark had been stripped from several trees in the vicinity. Fires were burning in front of most of the huts, and care was taken that they did not extend to the trees, and thus get a start through the forest.

"There was an odor of singed wool and burning meat, but no food was in sight. The blacks are supposed to live upon kangaroo meat as