Of all the sports of the day the most interesting was unquestionably a kangaroo hunt.
Captain Mangles and the two sailors rode a few hundred paces in advance, to choose practicable passes. It was a difficult and often a perilous task. Several times Wilson was forced to make a way with his hatchet through the midst of dense thickets. Their course deviated in many windings, which impassable obstacles, lofty blocks of granite, deep ravines, and treacherous swamps compelled them to make. At evening they encamped at the foot of the Alps, on the banks of a small stream that flowed along the edge of a plain covered with tall shrubbery, whose bright-red foliage enlivened the banks.
"We shall have difficulty in passing here," said Glenarvan, as he gazed at the chain of mountains, whose outlines were already growing dim in the twilight. "Alps! that is a name suggestive of arduous climbing."
"You will change your opinion, my dear Glenarvan," replied Paganel. "You must not think you are in Switzerland."
"Then these Australian Alps——?" asked Lady Helena.
"Are miniature mountains," continued Paganel. "You will cross them without noticing it."