Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/89

 that terrific night, yet the morning beams restored me, and hunger exciting both steed and owner, we soon hied to a friendly squatter's, whose house, with much difficulty through the falling timber, we at length in safety reached.

Before we close this chapter, to turn to matters of a very different character, we would say a few words of the emu and kangaroo, a bird and animal so strange and unknown amongst those in Europe. The emu in form and size closely resembles the ostrich, but the feathers, if feathers they can be called, are very different, being close, spiral, silky hair, bearing no affinity to the close-knit feather; being thus clad, therefore, they cannot fly; however, the rapid movement and muscular power of their long legs fully make up for this deficiency. They stand from five to seven feet in height, and in the distance look most strange and imposing to a stranger on first seeing a group of them speeding over the plain. They thus can outstrip the fleetest horse. The colour is dark gray or black; occasionally a few spots of dirty white appear under the nondescript wing. They form a considerable object of chase in the wild prairies, and over the extensive tracts of open country in the interior, more, indeed, as an object of exciting amusement, in the often fruitless attempts to run them down or circumvent them. Their flesh is of little value, being of an oily, disagreeable taste, though highly approved of by the natives. Their feathers are not valuable, and seldom