The profusion in which this gum is found enables large bodies to meet together, which, from their subsistence being derived from wild animals and vegetables of spontaneous growth, they can only do when some particular article is in full season, or when a whale is thrown ashore.

In order more fully to show how little the habits of this people have been understood I may state with regard to this very gum, called by the natives kwon-nat, that about the time the above account was published by Captain Sturt an expedition was sent out from King George's Sound in Western Australia in order to discover what was the nature of the article of food so loudly praised by them, and which they stated was to be found in certain districts in great profusion; the belief at that time being, from the accounts given of it, that it could be only a new and valuable species of grain.

The exploring party did not attain their object, and to this day many of the settlers believe the kwon-nat to be a kind of corn.
FOOD PLENTIFUL.

VARIETIES OF IT IN DIFFERENT LATITUDES.
Generally speaking the natives live well; in some districts there may at particular seasons of the year be a deficiency of food, but if such is the case these tracts are at those times deserted.

It is however utterly impossible for a traveller or even for a strange native to judge whether a district affords an abundance of food or the contrary; for in traversing extensive parts of Australia I have found the sorts of food vary from latitude to latitude, so that the vegetable productions used by the Aborigines in one are totally different to those in another; if therefore a stranger has no one to point out to him the vegetable productions, the soil beneath his feet may teem with food whilst he starves.