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Show SNAKES FOR DINNER. A Solid Kept lie Meal With Fricaseep. ('row for an Kntree. A St. Louis newspaper man tells some rather surprising stories about experiences he has had during the Kimberley gold excitement in Australia Austra-lia in lMMt). Disembarking at Cambridge Cam-bridge Gulf, he says, their party made their way for 800 miles to where the. miners were washing out the dirt. "We were not much encouraged on the way," says he. "The route lens' strewn with the dead bodies of horses, and the miners evidently carried about their persons what nuggets they had obtained. Fortunately there were no tenderfeet in our party. On our return re-turn wo saw men eating li.ards and snakes: and it was at this time that I first tasted crow. One of my companions compan-ions sighted the bird feasting off tho remains of a dead horse. The horse had died a natural death, und so wo preferred the crow. What did it tasto like? Well, if ercw possesses any merit as an article of diet, it lies in the individuality of the flavor. 1 have never eaten anything that, resembled it exactly. Hut I must own that cockatoo cock-atoo is worse. Wo tried both and found that of-tho two the crow was tenderer. "Snakes are very plentiful in Northern North-ern Australia. The negroes devour them greedily, in preference to beef. They cut off the heads of the reptiles, and, as there is no poison in the body, the flesh is harmless. But the native negroes of Australia are not fastidious. Some of them are cannibals, and it, went hard with the Chinamen for a time. The snake family will survive them, however, for there are only about 20,000 blacks surviving in Australia, Aus-tralia, and they are rapidly dying out with the kangaroo. These nativo negroes ne-groes are pitiable specimens of the human race. They subsist solely on game, which ie not always plentiful, 1 and live without shelter of any kind, ..-save ..-save in the rainy season. Then they prop uo pieces of bark a few feet from the ground, and lie close together, , their heads in the center and their feet stretched towards tho edge of the rude hut" |