While I stood near this spot, awaiting the arrival of the party which was still at some distance, I overheard a female singing. The notes were pleasing and very different from the monotonous strains of the natives in general. Just then I had been admiring the calm repose of the surrounding landscape, gilded by the beams of a splendid setting sun, and anticipating a quiet night for the party. The soft sounds, so expressive of tranquillity and peace, were in perfect unison with the scene around. Nothing could have been more romantic, nevertheless I could most willingly have dispensed with the accompaniment at that time, so associated were all our ideas of the natives, with murder and pillage. When my men came up I directed them to give a hurra, in hopes that it would put the party, whoever they might be, to flight. Yet after a cheer about as rough as English throats could well utter, the sweet strain, to my surprise, continued, And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail. But this was not the song of hope, but of despair, at least so it sounded to me under the circumstances, and so it really proved to be, as I afterwards ascertained. Men's voices were also heard, as we proceeded quietly to our old ground, and I could not help regretting that after having given the natives on the Gwydir the slip, and seen no others the whole day, we should again find the very spot on which we were to pass the night, pre-occupied by natives. Our party set up their tents, and the song ceased, but I proceeded with Mr. White towards the place whence the voices came. We there saw several persons amid smoke, and apparently regardless of our presence; indeed, their apathy, as compared with the active vigilance of the natives in general, was surprising. A young man continued to beat out a skin against a tree without caring to look at us, and as they made no advance we did not go up to them. Mr. White, on visiting their fires however at ten P.M. found that they had decamped. All this seemed rather mysterious until the nature of the song I had heard was explained to me afterwards at Sydney by The Bushranger when I visited him in the hulk on my return. He then imitated the notes, and informed me that they were sung by females when mourning for the dead; and he added that on such occasions it was usual for the relatives of the deceased to seem inattentive or insensible to whatever people might be doing around them.* (*Footnote. This custom is not peculiar to Australia, it prevailed also in the East: "A melancholy choir attend around, With plaintive sighs, and music's solemn sound: Alternately they sing, alternate flow The obedient tears, melodious in their woe." Pope's Iliad, Book 24 verse 900. The note here is: "This was a custom generally received, and which passed from the Hebrews to the Greeks, Romans, and Asiatics. There were weepers by profession, of both sexes, who sung doleful tunes round the dead." Harmer Volume 3 page 31.