The probable day of their arrival had been telegraphed from Perth,
duly noted and published by the local press. Furthermore, later
intelligence from the last stopping-place had been supplied, so that,
when, at mid-day, the Perth express steamed into the Pilot Mount
platform, there was the largest crowd collected there since the
official turning-on of the main of the Great Aqueduct by the Premier
of West Australia.
‘This seems a busy place,’ said Alister Lilburne, as he marked the
crowded platform, the equipages great and small, mounted and foot
police, ordinary miners in hundreds, besides others who walked in
procession, and carried flags—not to mention a camel train, with
turbaned Afghan drivers, standing patiently on the outer edge of the
assemblage. ‘Is this an everyday gathering, or is there any person of
distinction expected? What a number of nurses, in uniform too! Ha! a
light breaks in on me. Is it—surely not to greet you on your return?’
‘I am afraid that all this fuss is about your wife, and no one else,
my dear Alister,’ she answered, not without perturbation. ‘I expected
some kind of greeting, but nothing on so large a scale. Yes! it must
be so. Here comes my good friend the Mayor—with the Councillors in
their robes too. I suppose we must face it. Gore Chesterfield too,
Mr. Southwater, old Jack. I see my friends have “rolled up,” as we say
here. I am afraid I shall break down.’
‘My future rank and position are now irrevocably decided,’ said he; ‘I
shall go down to posterity as Mrs. Lilburne’s husband. Very proud of
the title, I assure you. Wish for nothing better—only, if only
_they_—well! it can’t be helped.’
‘Do you miss any one, Alister?’ she asked, looking anxiously in his
face.
‘Only two faces, darling! If only Carteret and Hayston were present,
what a tone it would have given to the whole thing!’
‘Poor Lytton, how he would have revelled in it! As for the bold
sea-rover, I shall always pray for him. But perhaps he is safer (and
others too) on board that dear _Leonora_. Now for the serious business
of the day. Mind you recognise it as such!’
The band struck up the National Air as the Mayor in his robes advanced
with dignity, and, bowing respectfully, shook hands with Mrs. Lilburne
and congratulated her warmly, greeting also her husband, who was
introduced formally to them. His Worship then stood up, and begged to
express briefly the pleasure which it afforded him, and the members
of the Pilot Mount Municipal Council, to welcome back a lady to whom,
speaking in their name, and as representing the miners of the field,
the citizens, and the inhabitants generally, they felt they owed so
deep a debt of gratitude (here he paused for a moment, to afford
opportunity for a burst of cheering—loud, hearty, and protracted), for
her services—valuable—he might say, invaluable, such as they would
never forget as long as there was an ounce of gold left in the field,
or in West Australia! Here the cheering was long—so protracted that
the Mayor held up his hand, and, motioning for silence, concluded his
remarks by inviting Mr. and Mrs. Lilburne to a banquet at the Town
Hall.
A carriage with four greys was in attendance, into which, in company
with the Mayor and Mayoress, the distinguished visitors were handed,
and driven to the Town Hall. Arrived at this imposing structure, they
were ushered into the Great Hall, where tables had been laid for
apparently about a thousand people. On the right hand of the Mayor sat
the guest of the day, with the Warden of the Goldfield—a dread and
awful potentate, having power of life and death (financially)—beside
her; the Lady Mayoress on the left hand of her lord and master
(ancient figure of speech now chiefly obsolete). Next to her sat a
lately elected Councillor, who was a representative citizen in several
departments of industrial and social development, and might be trusted
to find her ladyship in light and airy converse. On either side, as
well as at the end of the long table, sat leading mine managers,
‘golden hole men,’ and mercantile representatives, with, of course,
their wives and daughters. In prominent positions were distinguished
visitors and tourists, such as General Sir Walter and Lady Cameron,
the Honourable Denzil Southwater, Sir John and Lady Woods, and other
notables of rank and fashion. With the exception of the memorable
gathering when the Great Aqueduct discharged its first bounteous,
providential flow, no such gathering had ever been witnessed at Pilot
Mount. Full justice having been done to the repast, and the healths of
the King and Queen heartily and loyally, if briefly, responded to, the
Mayor called upon all present to charge their glasses, as he was about
to propose the health of the guest of the day—he might say, the
heroine of the hour—Mrs. Lilburne. If he gave her the title of Nurse
Lilburne, by which she had been known so favourably to the population
of the city, and the goldfields generally, perhaps he would be better
understood. That burst of cheering, straight from the heart, showed
how miners and workers of all classes recognised their true friends,
of whatever class or occupation. He had taken the liberty of
describing that lady as a heroine. There had been heroines in the
history of our Motherland, who had stood upon the battlefield,
ministering to the wants of the wounded and the dying, unmoved by
feelings of personal danger; heroines who had dared the risks of
plague, pestilence, and famine, with unshaken courage and faith in an
all-seeing Providence; heroines who had donned armour; heroines who
had dared hurricanes or shipwreck, calmly pursuing their ministrations
until the ‘whelming wave’ ended the tragedy; but none of these
exemplars of womanhood, whether ancient or modern, exceeded in lustre
the self-devoted attendant upon the feeble, the stricken, the sick,
and the dying, who patiently—at all hours, in all seasons—fought the
dread epidemic which had ravaged their city in its earlier days. It
had slain a large proportion of the pioneers. Young and old, gentle
and simple, tenderly or rudely reared, there had been but little
difference in the death-roll. Thank God! the plague had been stayed.
Their city was now as free from it and other diseases as the leading
metropolitan towns. But they owed it not alone to their excellent
medical staff, not to improved sanitation, but, under Heaven, to the
nursing staff—among whom the earliest, the most capable, the most
unwearied, the most successful in wresting patients from the very jaws
of death, was their distinguished—he might say, their illustrious
guest, to honour whom they were met that day. He gave them the health
of Mrs. Alister Lilburne, more widely known, perhaps more loved and
honoured, as ‘Nurse Lilburne.’
Long, loud, protracted indeed were the responses of the guests.
Heterogeneous as was the assembly, but one feeling—that of deepest
gratitude, of heartfelt respect—seemed to actuate the great gathering.
When at length Mrs. Lilburne stood up in her place, and the Mayor
requested silence, it was wonderful how suddenly all sound and motion
ceased.
She wore her simple nurse’s uniform. ‘This,’ she told her husband, ‘is
the dress in which I worked, the dress in which I earned the gratitude
of these people—out of respect to them, and the sisterhood who worked
with me so loyally, I prefer to wear it to the end of the ceremony.’
As she stood there, outwardly calm and collected—although naturally
roused to an unwonted state of exaltation by the electrical atmosphere
of the assemblage—she spoke the first few words in a comparatively low
tone, vibrating though they were with deep feeling and suppressed
emotion; but as she became more fully pervaded by the unusual nature
of the situation, and the exceptional circumstances under which the
acquaintance—the friendship even, with so many now present had arisen,
the colour came to her cheek, the dark eyes glowed with a fire none
had recollected to have seen before, and with head erect, and fearless
mien, she appeared to the excited crowd not only a beautiful woman—as
she had always been considered—but as an inspired prophetess, dealing
with questions not only of the life here, but of that beyond the
grave. Adverting to the formation of the Pilot Mount hospital, and its
humble inception by the committee of energetic, liberal-minded
men—nearly all of whom she was glad to see here to-day—she
congratulated the ladies and gentlemen present on the generous
response made to the first appeal for subscriptions. Money flowed in,
not only from the city, but from distant camps and ‘rushes.’ Rude
though the first building was, and humble the couches and pallets, the
essentials of careful nursing and skilled medical aid were there.
Crowds of patients taxed all their energy, but they were helped and
encouraged by the medical staff, then and now self-denying, and
generous, she might say munificent, in personal outlay—in giving
freely of their time and skill. Every one helped, from his Worship,
the Mayor, to the humblest tradesman. Progress was made—a large
proportion of cures was effected. Gradually, medicines, scientific
appliances and inventions were provided. And now what did they see? A
noble building with an efficient staff, a decreasing death-rate—an
institution comparing favourably with those of the metropolis, of her
connection with which she would be proud to the last day of her life.
With a parting word she would say farewell to Pilot Mount and the
friends she had made there—friends of all classes—some of whom she had
been privileged to help in the hour of need. Not only for this
magnificent recognition of her humble work, but for the unaffected
respect and sympathy which had been accorded to her since her first
arrival as a stranger in the field, was she deeply, sincerely
grateful. It would be among her most cherished memories, and would
remain with her to the last day of her life. She could not conclude
without a reference to not the least important feature of hospital
duties and experiences, in which she had been enabled by reason of her
opportunities to say a word in season of a wholly unsectarian nature
to those to whose bodily health it was her duty to minister. In the
hour of death, almost within view of the Day of Judgment, surely it
was appropriate to suggest repentance, to enjoin prayer! She respected
the creeds under which all had been reared. No minister of religion
had disapproved of her action, and she would now adjure those who,
like herself, had felt the dread presence of the Shadow of Death, to
recall the resolutions, the vows they had then made, and to act up to
them for the rest of their lives. She would be here for a few weeks
more; after her departure they would most probably not set eyes upon
her in this world again; but she would never forget her friends of
Pilot Mount, and would trust that her memory would always be
associated with words and deeds worthy of their mutual esteem.
The Warden of Goldfields, ‘rising in his place,’ begged leave of his
Worship the Mayor to speak briefly to the toast they had lately
honoured. From his necessarily extensive official knowledge of the
miners on this field, he could assert that many of them believed that
their lives had been saved by Mrs. Lilburne’s skill and devotion to
duty. The Chief Commissioner of Police was convinced that her advice
and personal influence had prevented one serious riot, and had
exercised more weight on the side of law and order than half the force
under his command.
* * * * *
‘Now, my dear Alister,’ said Elinor Lilburne, when, the function being
concluded, they had been deposited safely at their hotel, after a
spirited progress through an excited crowd, which might well have
confused a less experienced driver, ‘how about the “necessarily rough,
uncivilised inhabitants of a mining camp”?’
‘I apologise humbly for my presumption in offering an opinion founded
upon ignorance the most dense, combined with prejudice the most
childish. I shall submit all future statements to my “guide,
philosopher, and friend.” For the attainment of sound, practical
common-sense—combined with perfect manners—I shall always recommend
(as I once did hear an English squire of my own county do seriously to
a friend’s son and daughter) a year’s travel in Australia.’
‘Now, you are _too_ penitent; I don’t want that; but you will
acknowledge that you have learned a lesson!’
‘Lesson! I have gained an experience which I trust to profit by to my
life’s end. And now, when are we to have this drive to the real Pilot
Mount, which I heard you arranging with that good-looking young
fellow? May I venture to risk the assertion that _he_ is English?’
‘You are right there, or nearly so—he is a Scot—the Honourable Denzil
Southwater—youngest son of the Earl of Southwater—and a very fine
fellow he is. He is thinking of leading an exploring expedition across
the desert—where he may find gold, or the other thing.’
‘What other thing?’ asked Lilburne.
‘A death in the Waste,’ replied his wife sadly. ‘It is a gamble with
the King of Terrors. _He_ won in a late encounter. Two brothers—sons
of the soil—trained bushmen too, left their bones on the same track
last year.’
‘Killed by the blacks, I suppose?’
‘No! They went off the recognised trail, believing that they would
find water, but were deceived. They left a letter written just before
delirium set in—with farewells to their kin. Their bones were found by
the next exploring party.’
‘There are blanks, it appears, as well as prizes—though, after your
banquet, it is hard to believe in anything but general prosperity.
Fortune of war, of course, and so on.’
* * * * *
Five o’clock in the afternoon was the hour named, and, faithful to his
engagement, Mr. Southwater drove up to the door of the Palace Hotel,
with a pair of well-groomed, efficient-looking horses and a
double-seated American buggy. This, it may be mentioned, is the
accepted vehicle for business, or pleasure, on all goldfields,
pastoral stations, and, indeed, throughout Australia generally—when
fashionable metropolitan form is not imperative. If the load be heavy,
the American waggonette is employed—which combines the lightness and
toughness of the buggy with a weight-carrying capacity unknown to any
ordinary vehicle of British origin. The practical advantages of this
carriage were enhanced by the addition of a collapsible hood of white
canvas, a protection equally from sun, wind, or rain; thus combining
lightness, and a cool appearance, with efficiency. Mr. Southwater had
been asked to bring a lady with him, to make the party even, as well
as to provide agreeable society for Mr. Lilburne, while his wife sat
in the front seat, and conversed with him as driver.
‘Whom would you like, Mrs. Lilburne?’
‘Oh, I leave that to your taste and discretion. You know everybody in
Pilot Mount, as well as in Perth, I believe.’
‘If Mrs. Wharton has returned from Perth, she would be the ideal
fourth. If not, one of the Harley girls, or Jean White.’
‘You accept the responsibility, mind; I won’t interfere.’
As it turned out, Mrs. Wharton was still in Perth, and the Harleys had
gone to Adelaide. So when they drove up to a house in the suburbs,
surrounded by an unusually well-kept garden, and half-covered with a
purple flowering tacsonia, a tall and beautiful girl, very well
dressed, walked forth, and was introduced as Miss Jean White.
Mrs. Lilburne’s face became expressive.
‘Oh, I see! No one else but the “Fair Maid of Perth” to be found—what
a search you must have made. However, I trust you will be as
successful in another quest one of these fine days. You have my best
wishes, at any rate.’
‘I feel sure of that, Mrs. Lilburne, or I shouldn’t be here now,
should I?’
‘I suppose you mean that trifling affair after the skirmish of Pilot
Mount.’
‘Not at all. Much more serious—the fever I brought with me from Salt
Lake. I don’t easily give up, yet I really thought I was gone then.
But I see your husband and Miss Jean are getting on quite nicely, and
old Hotspur is beginning to paw the ground preparatory to rearing. We
had better start.’
One touch—a mere hint from the rein, and away go the fast, impatient
pair. The road is smooth, sandy, and just sufficiently firm to make
the going perfect; no trees to speak of, a dead level for many a mile,
with a faint blue range of hills on the farthest horizon. There had
been a shower or two—the dust was minimised.
The low sun brought with it the promise of a graduated coolness,
operating until midnight. The conditions of travel were perfect. As
the light vehicle, behind the pick of the city harness pairs, swept
smoothly on, the sensation was, in its way, pleasurably exciting; the
feeling of vast, almost illimitable space—the dry, warm air—the
absence of sound or movement other than the slight disturbance caused
by the quick hoof-beats and faint whirring of their own wheels, which
seemed like a rash intrusion into a vast, hostile, formless region.
For a short time conversation had ceased—simultaneously. Miss White
was gazing dreamily into the ultimate west, where the cloud scheme had
resolved itself into a vast sheet of crimson and gold, deepening at
the edges to orange, with gradually intruding blends of lake, pale
green and violet.
‘A penny for your thoughts, Jean,’ said Mrs. Lilburne. ‘And suppose we
make it binding on all four of us. We seem to have been suddenly
stricken dumb. I wonder what the occult influence could have been?
Miss White is to speak first.’
‘I was thinking,’ said the girl, ‘of the strangeness of life here.
Civilisation on one hand, with books, music, London fashions, art
novelties, scarcely a month old—all the great world’s great events
published at breakfast time from day to day. On the other hand, to
quote dear Sir Walter, “a sun-scorched desert, brown and bare”—and
here come the camels to fill in the picture!’ As she spoke, a long
train wound round the edge of a line of hillocks—their leader, with
turbaned attendants, adding the Eastern tone and flavour to the
apparition from the underworld.
‘Thanks very much,’ said Mrs. Lilburne. ‘You are evidently destined to
make a name in literature, when you elect to traverse that thorny
path. What is to be the title?—for a book it must be within the year!
Write while the “impulse” is fresh and unquestioned. Now for a
title—_The Yellow Slave_, or _Western Whispers_, by “Winifred.”’
‘You are making me blush,’ said the girl. ‘Who said I ever wrote? If
it were any other person I should call it unkind.’
‘My dearest Jean, you are convicting yourself out of your own mouth. I
did not say that you _had_ written, but that with your poetic tastes
and strong turn for idealising our everyday life, you would be certain
to write in the future. Not that I should care for your becoming a
“writing woman.”’
‘Now you are disrespectful to authors. Why should I not write? I might
give the English cousins a clearer insight into our lives, about
which, it seems to me, they are so strangely ignorant.’
‘All in good time, my dear! You were intended by Nature for something
much better than to write books for idle people to read. What do you
think, Mr. Southwater?’
‘Quite agree with Mrs. Lilburne,’ said the young man, looking upon the
lovely _ingénue_ with such manifest admiration that she turned to
Lilburne, and playfully besought his aid against her opponents.
‘Miss White is perfectly within her rights in extracting intellectual
pleasure from the scant materials which lie around her. She is making
the world at large her debtor by doing so. On the other hand, is the
game worth the candle? Think of the careworn expression, the harassed
nerves, the premature departure of youth—that divine if ephemeral
gift. And all for what? For the sake of a book which half the world
don’t understand, and the other half dislike.’
‘But think of the pleasure of being successful—really successful! What
a glorious privilege! And such a joy while one is writing! I think I
should die with ecstasy over a real triumph.’
‘Trust me—believe me, my dear Miss White, I have known writers,
successful ones, too, of both sexes, and they were mostly
disillusioned, if not disappointed. No, my dear young lady, the kind
gods have blessed you with the chief treasures of this mortal
life—health, youth, warm friends, and, I might say, the highest
endowment of all. Tempt not the jealous goddess.’
‘All this is very fine, and, no doubt, elevating,’ interposed
Mrs. Lilburne; ‘but suppose we revert to the practical. Here we are at
Pilot Hill, a place where romance has been acted—not merely written
about, as Mr. Southwater, quite among friends, might tell us if he
would.’
‘Nothing much to tell,’ said that young man, who, like all men of true
heroic mould, hated talking about his deeds of valour. ‘Only a quick
thing, soon over. Casualties few. Enemy routed with loss.’
‘What a shabby account of a real affair of outposts. Here’s Jean dying
to hear about it. You _were_ wounded, you know, or was it Lord
Newstead? We can’t let you off. Support me, Jean, love! Look at her,
Mr. Southwater.’
The girl, who had been gazing at Southwater with a world of interest,
admiration, and pained sympathy in her beautiful eyes, dropped them at
this appeal, and could only murmur pleadingly, ‘Please do.’
The young fellow was but a man. Thus adjured he would have been more
than mortal if he had resisted such an appeal.
‘Now, Mrs. Lilburne, this is hardly fair. But I’m not a public
character, and I know I can rely on you not to give me away. So here
goes, while we walk the horses up the hill:—
‘The night was hot and steamy. I was sitting in my tent writing home,
and Newstead was talking to Minniekins—really half the credit belongs
to her, for she gave us warning, you know. We were enjoying the quiet
loaf, when suddenly she began to growl—not a bark, but a low,
suspicious, disapproving note, hinting at undesirables. It was too
dark to see more than a few yards; but Minniekins rarely made a false
point.
‘We had finished a big clean up, and were mostly tired—perhaps a
trifle sleepy. I stopped writing and watched. Minniekins kept on
growling. On a sudden she burst into a fierce bark. Then I heard an
oath, and a sharp yell of pain, after which she went on barking worse
than ever. Then the scoundrels made their rush—it was a “put-up
thing,” I mean planned beforehand—and the scrimmage began.
‘A fellow jammed a revolver into my face, which I instinctively
knocked up, knocking him down with a left-hander at the same time.
‘His “gun,” as Americans call it, fell wide of him, and I grabbed it
before he got on his legs again. I heard shots while this little bit
of business was going on, and Mr. Banneret got a scratch—a close shave
all the same. My man was soon made safe, and I was just in time to see
Newstead laid out with a bullet through his left shoulder, not so far
from the heart. A police detachment came in on the top of the shindy;
but the battle was over. A tall man lay dead not far from the
gold-room—poor Dick Andrews was down, and played out; but he had saved
Banneret’s life by dropping “Long Jack” as the tall scoundrel—a noted
criminal from another colony—was taking a second shot.
‘Old Jack, who was just going to the township, and, being in full fig,
had of course got his six-shooter, had fired right and left with good
effect, so that when the Inspector lined up with the flower of the
police force, fully armed, there was nothing to do but to carry off
the wounded and bury the casualties. That was our Waterloo—short,
sharp, and decisive; if it hadn’t been for Minniekins, we should have
been taken, wholly unprepared—like the War Office in the Boer War. I
think she ought to be decorated for it.’
‘And Lord Newstead—I suppose he recovered?’
‘I can answer for that,’ said Mrs. Lilburne, ‘as I had him under my
care for a month, and a very refractory patient he was. He went home
by the next P. & O.’
‘Of course he did,’ said Southwater, in an aggrieved tone, ‘and
swelled about with his arm in a sling, giving himself the airs and
graces of the wounded warrior, and letting the girls wait upon him all
the way to Marseilles, under the impression that “his heart was weak,”
and all sorts of humbug, while Chesterfield and I had to come back
here and—er—take up the weary round of toil and what’s-its-name.’
‘Well, it seems to agree with you, Mr. Southwater,’ said the girl,
smiling in so bewitching a fashion that a man might have been nerved
to even greater exertion than such as was demanded from the
shareholders in a mine which had reached the dividend-paying stage,
and _such_ dividends too, as the ‘Last Chance, Limited,’ was even now
disbursing.
‘“All’s well that ends well,” is a comfortable proverb. I feel pretty
well, thank you, Miss White, and am gratified for the compliment. But
here is old Jack coming forward to welcome this honourable party, and
to do the honours in proper goldfield style.’
That venerable ancient now arrived on the scene, his bronzed and
gnarled countenance wrinkled into an expression of welcome, which
seemed with difficulty to adapt itself to his rugged face. The
intention, however, was unmistakable.
‘Proud to see you, Mrs. Lilburne—and Miss Jean. Lord love her, hasn’t
she growed into the beauty of the world! How you’ve shot up, to be
sure! It’s many a long year since your father and I met on the other
side. Well, he was always lucky—in more ways than one—that I’ll say
and stand to. Glad to see you, sir! Like to see the mine? Saw the big
silver mine at Los Angelos, did you? I was there many a year ago.
Didn’t ought to have come away neither. But I was a “forty-niner.”
Couldn’t help following the rush to ’Frisco—what a time it was!
There’ll never be anything like it again while the world lasts.’
‘My husband would like to see the machinery,’ said Mrs. Lilburne.
‘What a grand view you’ve got!’
‘That’s what I thought when I first seen it, ma’am. I was pretty well
told out when I got here first—thought I’d turn round and get back
while I’d a little strength left. But I couldn’t help standin’ still
to look at the view. The sun was just a-settin’, and there was a kind
of gold and red look over that far plain country. So, thinks I, it
looks mean to cut away back without proving one or two of these
“gulches”—that’s what we called them in San Francisco. So I stayed and
camped—and next day if I didn’t fall plum centre on the—the——’
‘The Great Pilot Mount Reef, going twenty ounces to the ton,’ said
Mr. Southwater, ‘which you’re going to show these ladies and
Mr. Lilburne—not forgetting a five-ounce nugget for Miss White.’
‘We’ve been breaking down the south end of the reef to-day, and got
some pretty coarse gold, so the ladies has come at a good time, sir.
Please to follow me, and we’ll see what we can do. It ain’t every day
we see a young lady like Miss Jean. Lord bless and prosper her!’
So the party was introduced to the ‘shift boss,’ with other leading
officials and men in authority; afterwards to be lowered down in the
‘cage’ to where men were working two hundred yards from the surface,
in narrow alleys with gleaming white or pink walls of quartz, in which
were golden streaks. Narrow bands of dull red or yellow metal, almost
unrecognisable as the root of all evil, and the lure for which men—ay,
and women—bartered soul and body, and were content to work in hunger,
dirt, rags, and wretchedness, if only they could gain a sufficiency of
the dross, so called, which people profess to despise, but which all
men covet and hanker for to their lives’ end.
The atmosphere was hot and humid; the men at work in these lower
levels might have passed for Red Sea stokers, as they laboured with
tense muscle and sinew.
To what purpose this labour was expended—so far from the light of the
sun or the fresh air of heaven—a visit to the treasure-chamber, in one
side of the great gallery, was recommended. There the person in charge
of the gold pointed out some of the specimens which had recently been
sent in. Besides these there was the retorted gold.
After the gold was extracted from the innocent-looking matrix, it was
poured into shapes, one of which, looking like the half of that anchor
of British loyalty and instinctive reverence to the Empire, the
British plum-pudding, the guardian had more than once offered to an
adventurous damsel ‘on tour’—if she could _carry it away_: a challenge
sometimes accepted; but in all cases the weight proved too great for
the fair arms which so lovingly enfolded the bullion. However,
fragments of the pure, precious metal were extracted from the
glittering heap and handed to Mrs. Lilburne and the fair Jean, with
apologies, even entreaties that they would deign to accept them, and
so bring good luck to the mine, and all who laboured in it.
‘I must say,’ said Lilburne, after marking with experienced eye the
various indications on this and other ‘drives’ (galleries), and
workings generally, ‘that this country of yours appears to me more
wonderful every hour I spend in it. Think of a solitary traveller,
“remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,” dropping upon a property like
this, and, what is more noteworthy, being able to keep possession of
it.’