In those days the “cockies” pegged out their claims and took the land for themselves; nowadays the Land Board takes it for them—not a bit here and there, as they did, but large areas of the very best part of the run—sometimes even the entire estate. How deliciously Robert Louis Stevenson writes in his book “Travels with a Donkey,” of the delights of sleeping out of doors! I wish he could have spent even one such night in the Australian Bush. There was a round pool, deep among the trees in one forest that I know of, and there at dusk the drama of the night—which is really the woodland day—used to begin with the ibis, that came each evening to bathe. I used to go into the wood and sit down under the trees just to watch and wait for them. Punctually, just as the sky changed from blue to pink and grey, they used to arrive—from some mysterious world of shades, I veritably believe—and, floating down silently from above the tree-trunks, step delicately into the water. It is lovely to see them fly; their necks arch back like the handle of some Ionic vase, purely Greek, though as they alight and stand in the water they are completely Egyptian in form, and with all the mystery of Egypt in their mien. They do not splash and flutter their wings in bathing, as other birds do, but, when they move at all, do so very slowly, lifting first one foot, then another, high out of the water; while they stare persistently, without the faintest trace of alarm at any intruder. All the other animals here are the remnant of the true wild, left far behind by the ages, uneasy, wistful, and half ashamed. But the ibis is the spirit of a civilization older than any other; and if it does not speak, it is only that it has learnt how futile are all words. One very hot night I took a blanket with me and camped out beside that pool. But I did not sleep, simply because everyone else seemed awake, and all the time things were happening. The lories sat up far later than they ought to have done, chatting among themselves. Then, as the ibis all floated away over the tree-tops once more, a white sulphur-crested cockatoo came down to bathe with a most prodigious splashing and fuss. After this the forest rested tranquil for a little while. Rolling myself tightly up in my blanket, I turned on my side and laid my cheek against the earth, mossy and sweet-scented, sweeping aside with my hand all the little nobbly gum-seeds. Away back in the scrub a lyre-bird gave a hoarse, angry cry—on one never-to-be-forgotten day in that same spot I had seen one of these shyest of all the denizens of the forest, with his lovely tail spread, treading arrogantly with his great feet across the very moss where I lay—then there was another spell of silence, broken only by the whispering of the leaves and an odd little complaining sound, where, high up above my head, a dead bough had fallen across another and sawed gently backwards and forwards, with a note like that of a ’cello.