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The flesh and legs of this bird are very black, and they smell very sweet. When they fly up and down the woods, they cry crocadore, crocadore, or cockatoo, cockatoo, whence their name. The cassowary is as large as a Virginia turkey, having a head nearly the same with the turkey, with a long stiff bunch of hair on his breast, also like the turkey.
For many a long year Cassowary was a sort of king in the locality of his birth, though this rank brought him no isolation. Now he is without rank and grim in his lonesomeness. True to the sentiments of his race, the men and women who knew him when he was strong and lusty strive to make him comfortable in his dotage; but he is repellent. His surliness does not vex them.
A mermaid also was exhibited defunct, I presume and a living cassowary five feet high, that swallowed stones as large as an egg. A white sea bear appeared in the port of Pollard's Tavern and could be seen for half a pistareen. A forlorn moose was held in bondage at Major King's tavern and shown for nine pence, while to view the "leapord strongly chayned" cost a quarter.
We came suddenly upon them, and they ran up a hill exactly like a flock of turkeys, but so fast that we could not get a shot at them. The largest cassowary ever killed in the settlement, weighed ninety-four pounds. Three young ones, which had been by accident separated from the dam, were once taken and presented to the governor.
Several years have elapsed since Cassowary made his last canoe. He acknowledged that his fingers had lost their cunning, but the fates ordained that his ideas should blossom as his manipulatory skill withered Gradually he became feeble in mind and body, and was wont to spend his time crouched in a rough shelter dreaming prodigious dreams.
The newly instituted industry of ostrich farming has probably insured this the noblest remnant of the old avian life from destruction; but the emu and the cassowary are still among the diminishing and endangered forms which unless taken into the human fold are likely soon to pass away.
A single egg, the production of a cassowary, was picked up in a desert place, dropped on the sand, without covering or protection of any kind. Its form was nearly a perfect ellipsis; and the colour of the shell a dark green, full of little indents on its surface. It measured eleven inches and a half in circumference, five inches and a quarter in height, and weighed a pound and a quarter.
Friday was then about fourteen feet high to the bill of him, with a big, broad head like the end of a pickaxe, and two huge brown eyes with yellow rims, set together like a man's not out of sight of each other like a hen's. His plumage was fine none of the half-mourning style of your ostrich more like a cassowary as far as colour and texture go.
The Mountain Eagle is a magnificent creature; but the Emu, or New Holland Cassowary, is perhaps the tallest and loftiest bird that exists. The capital of the colony, and the seat of the colonial Government is Sydney. The Town of Sydney is beautifully situated in Sydney Cove, which I told you is one of the romantic inlets of Port Jackson, about seven miles from the entrance of the harbour.
Being brought face to face with facts, the State gave orders which meant an old-age pension for the outcasts. The dole was liberal enough. The mistake was that it came too late. There was no reaction, as is oft the case with those who retire after the bustling phase to live on the bounty of the State, for Cassowary and his blind companion had never been strenuous workers or brain-compelling men.
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