The various kinds of wild-fowl with which the rivers and lagoons of Australia abound afford a never-failing supply of food to the natives, and many are the arts to which they have recourse to entrap these wary birds. During the period of the moulting season they catch many black swans. Some of the young men lie for hours in ambush on the banks until the unconscious swans have ventured so far into shallow water that they can run round them and cut off their retreat. When this auspicious moment arrives, with loud shouts the men dash in, and whilst one party intercepts the birds, so that they cannot get into the deeps, a second soon runs them down. In the same manner they take the young cygnets; and these I believe to be as good eating and as delicate an article of food as any country can produce. It is also an interesting sight to see the natives creep after wild-fowl, and under cover of the reeds and bushes get so near that they can either spear them or catch them with a noose. A reedy lagoon lies at your feet, almost surrounded by rocky cliffs and dusky woods; there are some small open spaces of water, but generally it is so thickly overgrown with high reeds that it looks rather like a swampy wood than a lake; in the distance you see curling up a thin cloud of blue smoke, which indicates that a native encampment is at hand. The forms of many wild-fowl are seen swimming about among the reeds, for a moment caught sight of, and in the next lost in the dusky green of the vegetation. Every now and then a small party of them rise up, and after winging their way two or three times round the lagoon, at the same time giving a series of their quack, quack, which are loudly responded to from the recesses of the reeds, they again settle down in another part of it. This circumstance and a few other signs induce a sportsman to suspect that there is some mischief afloat, and his doubts are soon set at rest: upon some bough of a tree, which stretches far out over the water and thus affords its occupant a view of all that is passing in the lake below, he sees extended the form of an aged native, his white locks fluttering in the breeze; he is too old to take a part in the sport that is going on, but watches every movement with the most intense interest, and by well-known signs directs the movements of the hunters, who may now be seen creeping noiselessly through the water, and at times they appear so black and still that even a practised huntsman doubts for a moment whether it is a man or the stump of a tree which he looks on. The natives are sometimes very successful in this kind of hunting: I have known a single man spear or noose ten wild-fowl, of different sorts, in an hour and a half or two hours' time.