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If this were the case, the existence of cassowaries and of marsupial quadrupeds, both in New Guinea and in Australia, becomes intelligible; while the difference between the littoral molluscs of the north and the south shores of Torres Straits is readily explained by the great probability that, when the depression in question took place, and what was, at first, an arm of the sea became converted into a strait separating Australia from New Guinea, the northern shore of this new sea became tenanted with marine animals from the north, while the southern shore was peopled by immigrants from the already existing marine Australian fauna.
A loudly wailing woman with her head covered up, and supported between two companions who are vainly trying to console her, and a party conveying two cassowaries, a pair of white peacocks, and a kangaroo from Calcutta to some rajah's menagerie up country, are among the curiosities encountered on the road the following day.
The blue flowers of the slender-leaved flax, combined with the bright hues of the scarlet acanthus, a flower peculiar to the country. A few cassowaries were bounding over the plain, but it was impossible to get near them. The Major was fortunate enough, however, to hit one very rare animal with a ball in the leg.
The Old Man noticed, as they walked, that a track through the thickest part of the jungle opened up a beaten, straight track, which he, for all his wanderings, had never before seen. The country was dry, too. Scrub hens and scrub turkeys, cassowaries, wallabies, huge carpet snakes, pigeons, fruits and nuts, bees' nests, and decayed trees full of great white grubs were there in plenty.
And the savages love them for their kind generousness, and give them pearls, and shells, and ivory, and cassowaries. And that's the way 'Wait a sec, said Anthea, splashing. 'I can't hear what you're saying. Shells and 'Shells, and things like that. The great thing is to get people to love you by being generous. And that's what we've got to do.
Mr. Mackaw's travelling companion possessed the awkward accomplishment of opening doors, and now strutted in, in quest of his beloved master. Affection for Mr. Mackaw was not, however, the only cause which induced this entrance. The household of Chateau Desir, unused to cassowaries, had neglected to supply Dr.
Among the birds, the most remarkable were the parroquets and cockatoos, the birds of Paradise of which so many fabulous accounts were given, and which until then had been believed to be without legs, the king-fishers, and the cassowaries, great wading-birds almost as large as ostriches.
These people are evidently fond of tame creatures, for we saw several beautiful little kangaroos hopping about, quite as tame and as elegant as fawns. Young cassowaries also, striped with black and brown, ran about as tame as barn-door fowls. This is a wingless bird, the body of which is about double the size of that of a large turkey, but its long legs make it five or six feet in height.
Adam throve, being prayed over before the gods of at least three creeds, in a garden almost as fair as Eden. There were gigantic clumps of bamboo that talked continually, and enormous plantains on whose soft paper skin he could scratch with his nails; green domes of mango-trees as huge as the dome of St. Paul's, full of parrots as big as cassowaries, and grey squirrels the size of foxes.
Young cassowaries, strangely striped with black and brown, wandered about the houses or gambolled with the playfulness of kittens in the hot sunshine, with sometimes a pretty little kangaroo, caught in the Aru forests, but already tame and graceful as a petted fawn. Of an evening there were more signs of life than at the time of my former residence.
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