CHAPTER XVI.

Guanas-Lizards-Snakes-Salt - Marshes—Fishing-Crabs —Toad – fish— Mangrove-trees-Romance and Reality—Night Sounds-Orange-groves— Gardens Gigantic Lily-Scarcity of Fresh Water-Winter Rains-Salt Well-Climate in Winter-Society-Conversation-Servants-Embark for Van Diemen's Land.

MANY large kinds of guanas inhabit New South Wales; some, which have been described to me, must be enormous reptiles. I have only seen two species, the most common being generally called the sleeping lizard, and is found also in Van Diemen's Land. It is about a foot or fourteen inches in length, the body dark coloured, fat, and bloated-looking; the tail short and thick; the head broad, with a snaky expression, and a long blue tongue, which gives the poor animal a terrible reputation among the vulgar, who declare that so blue a tongue must be a proof of its venomous nature. I believe, if the poor stupid creatures had the sense to keep their ill-hued tongues out of sight, many hundreds would escape violent deaths. Contrary to the habits of most lizards, which are remarkable for their extreme activity and timid alertness on the approach of a footstep, or the slightest noise, the sleeping guana is often seen lying in the midst of the road, and frequently the crushed body of one bears disastrous evidence of the fatal consequences of indolence. Sometimes we have turned aside to avoid driving over them, or have bestowed a light lash of the whip in passing, which only caused them to crawl slowly away, as if our friendly hint were a most officious and impertinent proceeding, and they had rather a preference for being trodden or rolled to death. They are most undeniably ugly creatures, although without the hideous pouch-cheeks of the West Indian guanas; but we always considered them quite harmless, until a little incident which occurred since our residence in Van Diemen's Land led us to suspect them of being at

least capable of mischief. One day, last summer, we found one lying in our path, during a bush-ramble; and without any intention to hurt or annoy the animal, but merely to intimate that its place of repose was an unsafe one, Mr. Meredith touched it gently with the barrel of his gun, when, instead of retreating as might be expected, it turned fiercely round, and snapped repeatedly at the gun, just as a savage dog would do, and bit so sharply and strongly as to cut into the solid iron with its teeth, as deeply as a hard stroke of a diamond cuts into glass. Had a hand or foot been in the place of the gun, a fearful wound must have been inflicted. Still, as they appear only to act on the defensive, I see no reason for wantonly destroying them, although I would not advise any one to incur their bite.

My other acquaintance in the guana family is a far less loathsome creature; I have only seen one specimen, which Mr. Meredith shot, as it was swiftly climbing a tree, with only its head exposed, watching his movements. The head and body of this together were not more than ten inches long, but the slender tapering tail measured more than twice as much. The head had no pouch-cheeks, but was a sharp, knowing-looking lizard's head, covered with small, close, hard scales, as were the entire body, tail, and legs; the feet had long toes, and long, sharp, black claws, evidently well adapted for climbing trees, and seeming as if, like the natives' yahoo, it could turn its feet any way required. The whole of the creature was most beautifully piebald black and white, and in some parts the old scaly coat was shelling off, leaving a brighter new one below. This guana had moveable teeth, like those of the snake, but, I need scarcely say, we were not anxious to experimentalize upon their qualities. By the ignorant, and even by some persons who might be supposed to know better, these animals are termed goannas, and I have heard of a great pianna among them.

66

Numbers of a small kind of lizard, about five or six inches long, used to frequent the garden as well as the "bush," and two took up their abode in my china-pantry, where I often saw them crouching motionless on the dresser, watching the flies till one came near enough to be snapped up in their nimble jaws. Flies were so great a torment, that I respected anything which aided to destroy them, and accordingly never molested the lizards;

but my housemaid, who, I fear, was destitute of all taste for natural history, had a great dread of my poor friends, and either used to run shrieking away, or fling something at them whenever they ventured into her sight. They were agile, delicate little creatures, with bright black eyes, slender long-tailed bodies of a mottled grey and pale brown colour, and extremely fine small feet and toes. Still, they were reptiles, and the common prejudice against their race extended even to these very harmless little creatures.

With the snake tribe in New South Wales, I am happy to say my personal acquaintance is very limited, for I fully partake in the horror usually and very reasonably entertained of them. Our servants had frequently raised an alarm about a “large black snake," which lived in an unoccupied hut near the house, but it always vanished before a gun could be brought, and we rather discredited the story, until on one occasion the alarm being, I suppose, more quietly given, Mr. Meredith succeeded in shooting it through the head, to the extreme satisfaction of the whole household. It was not a large snake, not being more than four feet long, of a purplish black colour, with a kind of damsonbloom on the skin, instead of a polished appearance, which most of them have, and down each side was a streak of dim red. The extreme tenacity of life in these reptiles, or more probably the long continuance of muscular power and motion, even after the head has been wholly severed from the body, has given rise to a common idea that at whatever time of the day a snake may be killed, it cannot die until sunset. The extraordinary activity with which the tail-end of the creature will leap and jump about, whilst the head is swiftly travelling in another direction, is horrible to see; it seems as if every joint had a vitality of its own, entirely independent of brains, or spinal cords, or any other imagined seat of life.

One of our men-servants told a story of a large black snake which lived in his hut a long time, and used to lie on his bed at night, until he took unto himself a wife, who, very naturally, demurred at the presence of so suspicious a bed-fellow, and induced him to kill it. The large kind called the diamond snake is (for a snake) as handsome a creature as can be conceived, being most exquisitely adorned with various colours, like mosaic

work. Could a lapidary imitate its varied markings in a girdle or bracelet of gems and gold, his fortune would be made.

During our walks in the forest we frequently saw a smaller kind of snake, about two feet long, and so exactly similar in colour to the dead sticks and leaves with which the ground was covered, as not to be observed until they moved: I several times have most narrowly escaped treading on them, which, as all the snakes known in this Colony are venomous, would be a dangerous accident. Some species are far more fatal than others, and of a few the bite is certainly mortal. Among the latter, the small one commonly called the whip-snake, or death-adder, is the most rapidly fatal of all. Several instances of immediate death from its bite were related to me. On the victims in two cases, my informant, our friend Mr. Dunn, of the Hunter River, had, as coroner for the district, held inquests; the evidence proving that in one instance death ensued in seven minutes after the bite, and in the other in eight, the sufferers being scarcely conscious of having been hurt, so very slight had been the puncture, and so wonderfully subtle the poison. It may well be imagined that these dreadful occurrences did not tend to diminish my terror of snakes.

One portion of our land at Homebush consisted of salt-water marshes, covered in high tides, and producing immense quantities of a species of samphire. Through these marshes deep drains had been cut and embankments formed, evidently at an enormous expenditure of labour, but for what purpose we never could divine. One of these drains, which, being very old, had become quite natural-looking, with shrubs, trees, and all kinds of growth adorning the banks, had a sort of wide flood-gate next the creek, through which the tide flowed and ebbed, bringing with it quantities of fine fish, bream and mullet especially. A couple of narrow logs formed something of an "Al Sirat ” across the deep channel, which was about twenty feet wide, and on this crazy bridge Mr. Meredith used to station himself to fish; but not being a votary of the (so called "gentle craft" of quaint old Izaak Walton, he found a spear armed with a strong barb a more efficient weapon than the rod, and often caught some very fine fish. I, meanwhile, read, sketched, or more frequently idled away an hour or two in watching the myriads of small crabs with

which the muddy banks were thickly peopled. At a certain state of the tide they might be seen scrambling out of the water by thousands, and often reminded me of a hungry cargo of stagecoach passengers, to whose dinner only a limited time can be allotted; for the whole troop, after sidling a short distance from the water, immediately commenced eating most expeditiously, picking up some mysterious comestible from the soft rich mud, first with one claw and then with the other, and continually carrying the supplies to the mouth, which, being situated in the broad central region, always gave the idea of a person very busily engaged in filling his waistcoat-pockets; and the effect of some thousands of these odd little bodies all engaged in the same manœuvres was droll in the extreme. If disturbed, they instantly began turning round and round on one claw, as it seemed in a kind of pirouette, using themselves as an auger to work their way down, and in an incredibly short time were all lost to view. Occasionally, two happened to fix on the same spot to bore into, or probably old holes remained in the mud, only slightly hidden by the last tide, and access to the known sanctuary was disputed ; in this case there was usually a great deal of clawing and turning under and over, which ended in the combatants both waltzing away together under the mud. These crabs were of various colours, some red, others black, and some dark green. On the sandy beaches near Sydney I have seen some very small ones, of a fine blue, just as busy pirouetting into the white sand as my Homebush friends were in the black mud. The larger ones had bodies the breadth of a dollar, whilst some of the small were not bigger than a fourpenny-piece.

A disgusting tenant of most of the shores around Sydney, and of ours in particular, is the toad-fish: most admirably named; 'it looks precisely like a toad elongated into a fish, with a tough, leathery, scaleless skin, and a bloated body, dark mottled brown above and white beneath. It is usually about five inches long, and disproportionately broad, but swims very swiftly, and is, for its size, as bold and voracious as the shark. When I said Mr. Meredith did not fish with a line and rod, I might have added that he could not, for the toad-fish, which swarm everywhere, no sooner see anything dropped in the water, than they dart towards it by dozens, and fight among themselves for the