Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/218

 thing—creek and lake, high plain and "claypan hollow," and left the crisp and brittle grass to be swept away by the hot wind? Mr. McKinlay dilates upon creeks winding their devious course alternately through flooded flats and grassy hollows; one in particular running "principally through what was recently a large lake, now a splendidly grassed plain of vast extent." A month or two more perhaps, and the retrospect would class the grassy plain, with the lakes, as among the things that are not. If so, what a country of contrasts! The sheep grew so fat, says the journal, that one in a condition fit for "jerking" could hardly be found in the flock.

The Aborigines seemed to pour out from every "nook and corner" where there was water. They were in companies of fifty or a hundred, and sometimes in considerably greater bodies. They were mostly an athletic, hearty, well-conditioned people. There were few children among them, and the most of these, as Mr. McKinlay states, were females. Both sexes of adults had the custom of knocking out the four front teeth of the upper jaw, but a good many preserved the perfect set. With one or two suspicious exceptions, they generally were quite inoffensively disposed, and Mr. McKinlay delighted the simple creatures by distributions of bead necklaces, and on one occasion by the welcome feast of a sheep.