Page:Life and Adventures of William Buckley.djvu/61

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LIFE OF BUCKLEY.

great number of kangaroo. By eating this food continually, I soon recovered my usual health and strength; for my friends, in their kindness, always served me with the choicest portion of everything they had; so that I had great occasion to be thankful. That I was sufficiently grateful to the Almighty, who had so wonderfully preserved me through such extraordinary sufferings and dangers, I cannot say; for my early notions of religion had been nearly destroyed by the unsettled life I had led, and the want of proper moral instruction. The excellent precepts instilled into my mind by my good old grandfather and grandmother had been long since neutralized, or smothered in the camp, in riotous company, and in the bad society into which I had been thrown by my imprudence. Nevertheless, in the wilderness, as I have already said, I often prayed earnestly and fervently to the great Creator of the Universe for health, and strength, and forgiveness.

At this time we killed an emu, a sort of ostrich, a bird of very large size, and excellent for its flavour. It cannot rise upon the wing, but runs with amazing swiftness.

After staying on this hunting ground for some months, I know not how long, we started again for a new locality, our supplies of game beginning to fall short in consequence of our continued hunting. Having arrived at a place good for this purpose, as they thought, we pitched, or rather erected our bark tents, having killed two immense large wild dogs on our way. The limbs of these animals they broke, and flinging them on