around, to the eye of a stranger, but easily to be detected on the brownish tinge of its leaves being pointed out. Our black immediately proceeded to cut a yam-stick, about five or six feet long, which he pointed with his tomahawk, and then, tracing the roots by a slight crack discernible on the surface of the ground, he dug underneath it, till, obtaining space enough for the point of his stick, he pushed it under and then prized up the root as far as he could. Going further from the tree, he repeated the operation until he had perhaps fifteen or twenty feet of the root laid bare. He now broke up the roots into lengths of three to four feet, and, stripping off the bark from the lower end of each piece, he reared them against the tree, leaving their liquid contents to drop into a pannikin. On holding a piece of root horizontally, no water is to be seen, but the moment it is placed in an upright position a moisture comes over the peeled part, until the pores fill with water, which drops rapidly. The natives, when travelling in search of water, on finding the tree, usually cut off a large piece of the bark to serve as a dish, which they place at the foot of the tree, leaving the broken roots to drain into it, whilst they smoke a pipe or light a fire. The root, on being broken, presents to view innumerable minute pores, through which the water exudes most copiously; from a pint to a quart of pure water being procurable from a root of twenty to thirty feet long. . . . . . . Many explorers have been much surprised to find natives existing where there was apparently no water to be found, either in roots or otherwise; but their surprise has been changed into admiration at another wonderful provision of Nature, in the Murn—so called by the natives, but Malleè-oak by the whites. This tree is very like the She-oak, but with bark less rough and more silvery in color. The wood is very hard, like lance-wood, and capable of taking a fine polish. When the trunk attains a diameter of about six inches, it becomes pipy, thus forming a natural reservoir, in which the rains of the wet season are collected; the branches of the tree, which join at the top of the stem, acting as conducting-pipes. The narrow aperture prevents much evaporation, and the natives know how to obtain water here, where an inexperienced traveller would never dream of searching for it. To procure this water, the native ties a bunch of grass to the end of his spear, and then climbing the tree, dips his primitive piston-rod—if I may so call it—into this singular well. Drawing it up again, he squeezes the water from the grass into his bark dish, and thus proceeds until he obtains sufficient for his present requirements."[1]
The native boys who accompanied Eyre in one of his journeys procured water from the roots of trees exactly in the manner described by Mr. Cairns.[2]
Sir Thomas Mitchell makes mention of water-yielding trees. On or near the Bogan he found the natives digging up roots for the sake of drinking the sap. They first cut the roots into billets and then stripped off the bark (sometimes chewing it), and, holding one end of the billet upright in the mouth, the juice dropped into it. He found the natives everywhere skilful in getting water. In one place where he encamped with his party the water was hot and muddy;
