A KANGAROO-STORY.
[To TITZ EDITOR Or TEX " EIPZOTATOR,"] SIR,—Seeing a piece on kangaroos in one of your recent numbers, I thought the following incident might be of interest to some of your readers. Daring the drought of 1885 I was camped on a tributary of what was called by courtesy the Maranoa " River " (Queensland). I say "by courtesy" as at that time there was hardly a hole in its entire course with water enough to fill a pint pot. The grass had long since disappeared, with the exception of here and there a patch of dry brittle tussocks containing little or no nutriment. There were some half dozen of us engaged in cutting down mulgar, currajong trees, &c., with a view to keeping as many of the surviving cattle alive as possible by feeding on the leaves until the long-wished-for rain came. Everything, horses, cattle, and even the kangaroos, wallabies, &c., with which two latter the district was overrun, were in a state of starva- tion. Being the month of August, or early in September, the nights were bitterly cold, with sometimes a sharp white frost. One night, having turned into my blanket as usual alongside a huge log fire, I was awakened about midnight by bearing something moving, and raising my head saw an old man kangaroo, fairly starved with hunger and cold, sitting on his haunches some two or three yards from me warming himself by the embers of the fire. Gaunt and lean, in the moonlight he made a curious and, I must own, somewhat pathetic picture. When he saw he was being watched he bounded stiffly away, and I saw some twenty or thirty yards off the doe, which evidently had not had the courage to come closer to the warmth. For several nights the "old man" made a practice of paying his nocturnal visit, until one night I missed him, never seeing him again; doubtless he either succumbed, like most of his mates, to the drought, or fell a victim to a " scalper's " rifle, a reward of 9d. per scalp being paid, I believe, by the Government in order to stop the depreda- tions to herbage caused by these animals.—I am, Sir, &c.,
DINGO.
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