The tops, leaves, and stalks of a kind of cress, gathered at the proper season of the year, tied up in bunches, and afterwards steamed in an oven, furnish a favourite, and inexhaustible supply of food for an unlimited number of natives. When prepared, this food has a savoury and an agreeable smell, and in taste is not unlike a boiled cabbage. In some of its varieties it is in season for a great length of time, and is procured in the flats of rivers, on the borders of lagoons, at the Murray, and in many other parts of New Holland. There are many other articles of food among the natives, equally abundant and valuable as those I have enumerated: such as various kinds of berries, or fruits, the bulbous roots of a reed called the belillah, certain kinds of fungi dug out of the ground, fresh-water muscles, and roots of several kinds, etc. Indeed, were I to go through the list of articles seriatim, and enter upon the varieties and subdivisions of each class, with the seasons of the year at which they were procurable, it would at once be apparent that the natives of Australia, in their natural state, are not subject to much inconvenience for want of the necessaries of life. In almost every part of the continent which I have visited, where the presence of Europeans, or their stock, has not limited, or destroyed their original means of subsistence, I have found that the natives could usually, in three or four hours, procure as much food as would last for the day, and that without fatigue or labour. They are not provident in their provision for the future, but a sufficiency of food is commonly laid by at the camp for the morning meal. In travelling, they sometimes husband, with great care and abstinence, the stock they have prepared for the journey; and though both fatigued and hungry, they will eat sparingly, and share their morsel with their friends, without encroaching too much upon their store, until some reasonable prospect appears of getting it replenished. In wet weather the natives suffer the most, as they are then indisposed to leave their camps to look for food, and experience the inconveniences both of cold and hunger. If food, at all tainted, is offered to a native by Europeans, it is generally rejected with disgust. In their natural state, however, they frequently eat either fish or animals almost in a state of putridity. Cannibalism is not common, though there is reason to believe, that it is occasionally practised by some tribes, but under what circumstances it is difficult to say. Native sorcerers are said to acquire their magic influence by eating human flesh, but this is only done once in a life-time. [Note 70: The only authentic and detailed account of any instance of cannibalism, that I am acquainted with, is found in Parliamentary Papers on Australian Aborigines, published August, 1844, in a report of Mr. Protector Sievewright, from Lake Tarong, in one of the Port Phillip districts.