Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/59

 style, and all apparently so bent on mischief that the leader deemed it imprudent, with his very small party, to persist in going farther. Fortunately there was a great awe inspired by the horses. Again, at the Barcoo, he was compelled to use fire-arms to repel the furtive attacks of the natives; and it would appear that about this place they had tried similarly to surprise Gregory several years before. Landsborough found that the best plan was to give them nothing, in which case they seldom troubled him with their presence. When presents were given them, the more they got the more they wanted. They did not seem to be numerous in the districts passed through.

The kangaroo were seen to be numerous near Carpentaria, and emus were chased on the banks of the Flinders, one of their number having been caught and dressed as food. As McKinlay's party observed a Platypus (Ornithorhyncus paradoxus) in the water of the Upper Burdekin, we have thus the remarkable fact that the three distinguishing types of Australian fauna range through the widely-separated latitudes of the country, from Carpentaria and its vicinity far into the tropics in the north, to the southern extreme of the colony of Victoria, extending to south latitude 39°. The typical vegetation, too, seems equally pervasive. Dr. F. Mueller of Melbourne, in giving, by way of appendix to