When I danced, the blacks would squat in a huge circle around me; those in the front rank keeping time by beating drums that I had made and presented to them.

The bodies of the drums were made from sections of trees which I found already hollowed out by the ants.
These wonderful little insects would bore through and through the core of the trunk, leaving only the outer shell, which soon became light and dry.
I then scraped out with my tomahawk any of the rough inner part that remained, and stretched over the ends of each section a pair of the thinnest wallaby skins I could find; these skins were held taut by sinews from the tail of a kangaroo.

I tried emu-skins for the drum-heads, but found they were no good, as they soon became perforated when I scraped them.
Never a day passed but we eagerly scanned the glistening sea in the hope of sighting a passing sail.

One vessel actually came right into our bay from the north, but she suddenly turned right back on the course she had come.

She was a cutter-rigged vessel, painted a greyish-white, and of about fifty tons burden.