Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/362

 The aboriginal population are evidently getting more numerous—another indication of the comparative plenty, and of the permanent supply of water and food of tropical regions. They still keep to the ranges, where they seem busy burning the grass. On the 1st May the party came suddenly upon one of them, who ran off in great flight. It seemed strange that more should not be met with in so fine a country. On the 8th, while in the neighbourhood of the line of trees that marked the course of the Leichhardt, the natives were actively burning the vegetation in all directions. A fuller share of tropical life now clusters around the travellers. Pelicans are abundant; like the kangaroo and other Australian denizens they pervade the entire country. Sturt's pigeons are in such numbers that they are described as vast clouds darkening the ground beneath them. The multitudes of ants and their habitations are alluded to by most Australian travellers. In their migrations these industrious communities leave behind them memorials that may well bear a comparison, after its kind, with a Nineveh or Babylon. Writing on 24th April, McKinlay remarks upon the numerous red-ant hills which the expedition, for the previous hundred and fifty miles of its course, saw upon the slopes and tops of the ranges. Untenanted and going to decay, many were like sharp spires, and all