The kettle soon boiled, and as we ate our tea-dinner, the sun went down, and night quickly swallowed up the short twilight, leaving us to depend entirely on our fire, which presented a goodly pile that shot forth cheerful flames, making the scenery around us bright with light. The ground for the space of many yards glittered beneath the flickering rays; the bowls of the tall trees seemed whiter than usual; even the brown cheeks of the natives looked less dark, as they chattered and laughed over their supper. Cold grog, or hot brandy-and-water, was leisurely sipped by those who lay on their couches in the full tranquillity of after-dinner ease; and as digestion proceeded, songs and catches awakened the echoes of the woods. Tired at last, we sank to sleep, having first, however, visited our horses and changed their tether. During the night I woke up. All around were fast asleep in different postures; some rolling about uneasily in their dreams; others still as the dead. I heaped fresh logs upon the fire, which blazed forth anew. The natives were all huddled under their wigwams, which are about the size and shape of an open umbrella resting on its edge. The night was dark throughout the forest, and overhead; the little circle of light within which I stood, seemed like a magician's ring, sacred and safe from evil spirits that filled the air around. It was as the speck of Time amid the ocean of Eternity -- as Hope, bright and solitary in the midst of unfathomable darkness. There I felt safe and secure -- but without -- who might tell what spirits roamed abroad, melancholy and malignant? Peering into that dark boundary of forest, the eye vainly endeavoured to pierce the gloom. Fancy peopled its confines with flitting shapes, and beheld a grinning hobgoblin in the grotesque stump of many a half-burnt tree, on which the light momentarily flickered. The ear listened eagerly for sounds in the distant solitude; and one almost expected to hear shrieks of laughter or of terror borne upon the night-wind from the recesses of the hills. Evil spirits seem peculiarly the companions of heathen savages. A wild, desert, and desolate region, traversed only in the day-time, and rarely even then, by straggling barbarians whose hearts have never known a single gentle emotion, seems naturally to be the haunt of the Spirits of Evil. Chingi, the terror of our natives, is often seen by them, as they lie cowering under their kangaroo skins, and huddled together in the extremity of fear, stalking giant-like and gloomy along the summits of the hills, whilst the moon shrinks timidly behind her curtain of clouds.