FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE BUSH
Next morning, my brother and I saddled up early, and started off
through the Bush for Mount Spencer, directly after breakfast. There
is something very bewildering about one’s first introduction to the
Bush, especially in the coast country of Queensland, which is one vast
stupendous forest of different sorts of trees. Mile after mile, day
after day, you ride on through the forest, with a tree on an average
every ten yards. If you keep in the valleys you see nothing but trees,
and if you climb up a mountain you see nothing but more trees. Here
and there you come upon a small open plain, a few hundred yards in
extent; but until you get used to it the monotony of the endless timber
is appalling, and it is easy to realise the terrible madness that so
often comes over those who get lost in the Bush. The only change is
from white gum-trees on the flats, to black iron-barks on the ridges,
and one ridge and one flat is so like another, to an inexperienced
eye, it seems incredible that anyone can ever find their way about, or
know exactly where they are. Some people never can, and I have known
natives of the country, who have lived for twenty years in the Bush,
and who have still been helpless to get from one place to another
without a guide, in country that they had ridden over for years. These
are the exceptions, however, and, as a rule, a man with a moderate
bump of locality soon learns the art of finding his way in the Bush.
Very slight landmarks will serve to guide a good Bushman, for no two
places are really exactly alike, and on the coast country there is
generally some mountain or other to get a sight of, which will enable
anyone who knows the country he is in to take his bearings. Away on the
open rolling plains of the West, or, worse still, in country covered
with endless brigalow scrub, the Bushman has often not a single mark
to guide him for many miles, except the sun or stars. In such country,
finding one’s way about is reduced to an instinct, which is a natural
gift by no means to be acquired; and unless a man be endowed with
it, he had better never attempt to wander far alone in the trackless
wilds of the Australian Bush. Many a man who has tried it, under the
delusion that he was born to be an explorer, has paid the penalty of
his rashness with his life. Witness the fate of Burke and Wills, whose
miserable end was due not nearly so much to the force of circumstances,
as to their being by nature utterly unfitted to find their way about
the Bush; for they perished within a few miles of their own plant of
provisions, without having the slightest idea where they were.
The first thing that strikes one is the lifeless solitude of the Bush.
The fierce searching light of a vertical sun prevents it from being
gloomy, and, indeed, the trees in the open timbered country give a
very scanty shade, but everywhere there is a weird solemn stillness
that is most impressive. In the middle of the day, birds and beasts
retire to the cool shade of the scrubs on the banks of the creeks, and
there is not a sound to be heard, nor a living thing to be seen. The
accumulated silence of a thousand years seems to brood over some of
the mountains and valleys of this vast land, where, perhaps, the sound
of man’s voice has never yet been heard. Now and then a light breeze
rustles in the tops of the trees, which move softly, as if stirring in
their sleep, but it quickly passes away, and sunshine and silence are
everywhere again. But the sensation of loneliness very soon wears off,
and in a little while even the endless trees come to look like friends
in whose company it is no hardship to pass a day. There is a deep
fascination about the freedom of the Bush, whose subtle influence very
soon enslaves those who go to live there, and generally unsettles them
for any other mode of living.
A “new chum,” as a new arrival in Australia is called, is never very
long in the country without getting some sort of fall off a horse, and
I got my first one a few miles from the Hollow. Like nine out of every
ten station horses, the animal I was riding had a sore back, and was
girth-galled as well, so I was riding with the girths very loose. Now
there is one thing in riding through the Bush which the sooner a man
learns the better, and that is, however fast he is going, and however
thick the timber is, never to attempt to guide his horse clear of
the trees. As long as he gives him his head and does not attempt to
interfere with him, his horse will never run him against a tree; but
he is certain only to have one side to his mouth, and any efforts to
keep him clear of one tree will probably send him into another. The
way in which an old stock-horse shaves the trees with just a couple of
inches to spare, at racing pace, makes his rider’s hair stand on end,
and gives him a cold feeling down the back at first, but he soon drops
down to sitting back and leaving his horse to steer clear of the timber
by himself. These sorts of little peculiarities are so well known to
everyone who has been a little while in the country, that they always
forget to tell anyone of them who has not. As I followed my brother at
a hard canter along the track winding through the timber, an ill-judged
attempt to induce my horse to give rather a wider berth to a gigantic
gum-tree produced exactly the opposite effect, and a collision was the
result. The girths being quite loose, the cant which we got from the
gum-tree, turned me and my saddle half round, and, as my intelligent
animal at once redoubled its speed, it was not long before we parted.
I landed on my shoulder, and the pace at which we were going sent
me head over heels, my farther advance being abruptly stopped by an
iron-bark tree, against which I brought up with considerable violence.
My horse tore past my brother, who immediately set off after it, and
they both disappeared in the Bush. The first impulse of anyone under
the circumstance would have been to have a smoke, and my temper was by
no means improved by finding that my pipe had been smashed to pieces
between myself and the iron-bark tree. However, I set off down the
track, and after about half a mile, met my brother coming back, leading
my horse. He had hunted it for about a mile, and fortunately bailed
it up between two gullies, and caught it; for, as a rule, it takes at
least three men to surround a loose horse in the Bush, and even then,
unless it is a very quiet one, they will not catch it. After about
fifteen miles of low ridges and flats, we came to the foot of the main
coast range.
A zigzag road cut through the scrub took us over the pass, and the
moment that we got to the top the change in the atmosphere was quite
extraordinary. Though the sun was just as hot, there was a delightfully
fresh light feeling in the air, the horses ceased to sweat, and one
felt the same sensation as when one comes out of a greenhouse into the
open air. The top of the range was covered with spotted or scented
gum, the perfume of which is very strong, and rather like that of a
lemon-scented verbena.
About sixteen miles of monotonous stony ridges covered with endless
black iron-barks brought us to a dense clump of wattles, a sort of
mimosa--tall, feathery, graceful trees, with leaves like a willow, and
sweet-scented yellow flowers. Through this the road passed, and we
emerged on to a piece of level country covered with white poplar-gums
and grass-trees. The latter are most comical-looking objects. They have
a black bare stem, from one to eight feet high, surmounted by a tuft
of a sort of half rushes and half grass, out of which, again, grows
a long thing exactly like a huge bulrush. A lot of them always grow
together, and a little way off they are not unlike the illustrations
of Red Indian chiefs in Fenimore Cooper’s novels. The tuft of grass at
the top has a sort of core, white and soft, that tastes rather like a
Spanish chestnut, and is good to eat, when there is nothing else to
be had. About a mile along the flat brought us to the Mount Spencer
horse-paddock fence, through which we passed, and got to the station
just at sundown.
Somehow or other, in Australia, no matter how long or how short one’s
journey is, one nearly always gets to the end of it about sundown,
which seems to be the orthodox hour, especially for strangers, to
arrive at a station. As we emerged from the timber in the paddock into
the large open space in which the station lay, it struck me as one of
the most beautiful places I had ever seen. As a rule, on the coast
country the timber is so thick that the look-out is necessarily very
limited, and although here and there there are very pretty spots, it
is very seldom that there is a panorama of any extent worth looking
at. Of course on the downs you can see as far as the horizon in every
direction, but the monotony of the rolling plains of grass is almost
as bad as the Atlantic. The view, however, from Mount Spencer is
magnificent, and certainly beats anything I ever saw in Australia.
The station stands on a low broad ridge, which was originally timbered
like the surrounding Bush; but the trees have all been cleared away,
the stumps burned out, and the holes filled in, so that the ground is
now a smooth expanse of short green turf, sloping gently down to the
edge of a large lagoon, about 300 yards away. The lagoon itself is a
mile and a half long, and about a mile across, the centre covered with
water-lilies, and the edges fringed with a thick wide belt of rushes.
On the far side from the station a forest of huge gum-trees follows the
winding shores of the lagoon, its outline broken by one or two little
promontories running out into the water; and above the forest, like an
amphitheatre, rise the mountains of the coast, running back in broken
rocky spurs to Blue Mountain, a vast densely-wooded range 3000 feet
high and fourteen miles away.
The sun had just set when we arrived, and everything was deadly still.
The shadow from the hills at the back of the station had fallen across
the lagoon, in whose dark waters the forms of the white gum-trees
around were perfectly reflected. The shades of evening had fallen upon
the forest, but the mountain ranges beyond were still lit up with the
rosy after-glow of sunset, and looked almost transparent against the
deep pure blue of an autumn evening sky. Hundreds of water-fowl of
every description were dotted over the expanse of the lagoon, the ducks
now and then rising up in flights, and passing over the station to a
swamp at the back. Rows of solemn-looking white egrets were sitting
on the fences, running out into the water, or stalking about amongst
the reeds; and high overhead a solitary pelican was wheeling round in
circles, with wings outstretched and motionless. Now and again a flock
of whistlers would rise up with a tremendous clatter and excitement out
of the rushes, as if they were frightened out of their wits, and then,
after going for a fly round, settle again close to where they started
from. The shores of the lagoon, in front of the station, between the
two fences of the small paddock, were always kept as a sanctuary for
all the ducks and white fowl. Here they were never fired at. They knew
it perfectly well, and, when inside the bounds, they were so tame that
they would let anyone walk up to within twenty yards of them.
On the far side of the lagoon the smoke of a Black’s camp was rising
up through the trees, and a mob of cattle were standing up to their
knees in the water, taking their evening drink, and lazily nibbling at
the rushes round them. The whole place looked wonderfully peaceful and
quiet,--altogether the kind of place that it would be very easy to make
a home of, and where it would be very difficult to keep up the feelings
of an exile for very long.
The last feed on a station--dinner, tea, supper, or whatever it may be
called--is always just after dark, and is the most solid meal in the
day. Bushmen smoke so much and drink so much tea, that they are rather
mean performers at breakfast, and in the middle of the day they are
generally out on the run, but there must be something wrong if they
cannot eat a square meal in the evening. After we had had supper, and
a smoke, of course, I was shown my camp, which was a slab hut about a
hundred yards away from the big house. The furniture consisted of a
canvas stretcher for a bed, a fragment of looking-glass balanced on two
nails driven into a post, a table with a tin basin, and a bucket. But
there were heaps of blankets, and a fireplace, which is all that is
wanted to make one perfectly comfortable. The slabs which formed the
sides of the hut were put up vertically, and as I lay in bed the spaces
between them afforded a fine view of the surrounding country. There was
no door, and the roof was not as water-tight as it might have been,
so that when it rained, five little streamlets of water descended on
my bed; but I subsequently diverted them on to the floor by means of a
couple of sheets of corrugated iron, which I secured overhead.
Besides the light of a wood fire, the inside of the hut was illuminated
by a fat-lamp, a simple contrivance, in the form of a jam-tin full of
fat, with a fragment of tweed trousers stuck through a hole in the top
for a wick, which gives a very fair light. I was rather tired, and not
sorry for the prospect of a camp; but when I dragged back the blankets
to turn in, I discovered an enormous carpet-snake, about eleven feet
long, comfortably coiled up in my bunk. It raised its head lazily, and
after looking at me for a second or two with a want of interest that I
was far from feeling myself, it coiled itself up again, and prepared
for another sleep. My brother had just gone, but I shouted to him to
bring a stick or something and help me kill it. He came back and looked
in.
“What’s the matter? Snake? Oh, don’t kill that one. That’s a tame one,
that belongs to Rice. He wouldn’t have it killed for anything, and,
besides, it’s only a carpet-snake, and they are perfectly harmless.”
“H’m, it’s all very well to say it’s harmless,” I observed; “I suppose
you mean it’s not poisonous. From the look of its head, it could bite a
piece out of you about the size of a tea-cup, and anyhow it’s not going
to sleep in my bed.”
“Oh no,” said my brother, “it has no business here. It lives in a tub.
Here, I’ll take it away and put it to bed,” and seizing it by the neck,
he dragged it off, and dropped it into a barrel outside the store,
about fifty yards away, from which I devoutly hoped that it would not
be able to get out again that night.
I turned in, in hopes of a good sleep, but I soon discovered that I
was very unlikely to get it. The station seemed peaceful enough at
sundown, but no sooner had night fairly settled down than a combination
of noises arose that would have awakened Rip Van Winkle himself. In
the first place my camp was not far from the calf-pen, in which the
six or seven calves belonging to the milkers were shut up every night.
These little brutes bellow incessantly all night, and their mothers
come and look over the railings, and answer them. Then my partner Rice
was a great poultry fancier, and had a vast army of chickens. Cocks in
Australia always begin to crow about twelve o’clock at night, and leave
off at sunrise, so about twelve of these pests added their voices to
the general clamour, supported by a dozen or so of call-ducks, which
were certainly pure-bred, if the noise that they make has anything to
do with their pedigree. But the din reached its climax when a native
dog howled somewhere away in the Bush. Instantly every dog on the
station started up mad with excitement, and began barking with a fury
that nothing but exhaustion could abate. Two Russian wolf-hounds,
three Kangaroo-dogs, three cattle-dogs, four bull-dogs, and five
fox-terriers, all started a volley of barking which was kept up
incessantly for a quarter of an hour, and then slackened down to a sort
of platoon-fire of yaps and howls which lasted the rest of the night.
In time one gets perfectly used to this sort of nocturnal concert,
and can sleep through any amount of it; but at first it is simply
maddening, not one wink of sleep did I get the first night, and I was
glad when daylight came, and it was time to turn out.
No words can describe the glory of a morning in the Australian Bush.
There is a pure soft freshness about the air, full of the peculiar
scent of the gum-trees, of which no one ever tires, and a sparkling
brilliancy in the morning sunlight that no other climate can produce.
Surely this is the time of all others for a smoke. There is sure to be
something left in your pipe from the night before. If not, fill it
again, and light it with a fire-stick from the hearth; and years after,
if you are a true lover of the weed, you will own that no smoke in the
world comes up to the one before breakfast on a summer’s morning in the
Bush. There is something in the climate that brings out the flavour
of tobacco, and a good deal in the way of living that encourages
smoking; for Bushmen, as a race, are probably the heaviest smokers in
existence. The tobacco they smoke is very good and very strong, mostly
manufactured in America, and known as fig-tobacco. When once a man
takes to smoking it, it ruins him for any other sort of tobacco, but as
a general rule, about ten years is as long as a man can go on smoking
it without finding that it is knocking his nerves to pieces. A fig a
day, or just short of an ounce, is a common allowance, but a Bushman’s
pipe is never out of his mouth. He is always lighting it to have a few
whiffs, which is a most poisonous form of smoking. The last thing he
puts away at night, and the first thing he looks for in the morning, is
his pipe; and if he wakes in the night, he has a smoke then.
I was not long in falling into the ways of the country in this respect,
and, lighting a pipe, I sallied out to have a look round. A soft white
curtain of mist was rising off the lagoon and rolling away before
the sun, to gather for a little while on the sides of the deep blue
mountains around before it finally disappeared. The sun rose over
the range in a blaze of heat, turning the dark waters of the lagoon
into a sheet of gold, and streaming through the forest in long bands
of glittering light. The water-fowl on the lagoon awoke, uttering a
hundred different cries, the ducks standing up on the lily leaves and
flapping the dew from their wings. Close to the station one or two
butcher-birds were piping their morning song, a strange little melody
with not many notes, which no one who has heard it will ever forget.
On a dead iron-bark tree, just outside the horseyard, three or four
black crows were sitting, talking to each other, and looking as wise
as nothing but an Australian crow ever did. They are far the most
interesting birds in the Bush, and the way in which they talk to each
other is simply fascinating, for it really seems as if one could not
help knowing exactly what they are saying.
Round the store-door a sound assortment of poultry were assembled
waiting for their morning feed, most of them thoroughbred game, bred
from imported birds, and on the roof were about a hundred pigeons
of every conceivable breed. Rice was immensely fond of his chickens
and pigeons, never went home to England without bringing back a
fresh supply, and some of the birds which he raised on the station
were very high-class specimens indeed. Besides all these he always
had a menagerie of tame birds and beasts of all kinds. When I got
there the collection contained an eagle-hawk, three crested falcons,
seven wood-ducks, five whistlers, a magpie, three teal, a kangaroo,
a wallaroo, a native bear, five flying squirrels, three spur-winged
plovers, and a cageful of parrots and small birds, and last, but not
least, the infernal carpet-snake which I found in my bed. They were all
quite tame, and, except the flying squirrels and parrots, which lived
in cages, and the eagle-hawk, which had a string to its leg, they all
used to hang about the place on the loose.
The station itself was quite a small village of houses. The big house
stood a little way apart, in a garden with a paling-fence round it,
about eighty yards square. Unfortunately it was right on the top of
a quartz ridge, where there was very little soil, so that it was
difficult to get trees of any size to grow; but all sorts of creepers
throve wonderfully. In front of the house were one or two Poincianas,
and a very pretty bunya, a sort of fir-tree; and round every pile
of the house grew masses of scarlet geraniums, which are supposed to
possess the virtue of keeping away snakes. At the back there was a
rockwork covered with beautiful ferns, and beyond that a small pond
with dwarf bamboos round it, where the tame wild-ducks lived.
The house itself was a very comfortable building, two stories high,
about sixty feet long and thirty-five feet wide, built upon round
piles seven feet high, with an eight-foot verandah all round. Down
below was the dining-room, with a huge brick fireplace, the pantry, a
small store, an office and a bathroom. Over the dining-room was the
sitting-room, also with a large fireplace, and with “French-lights”
opening on to the verandah, and, on the same floor, four very
comfortable bedrooms. The house, with the exception of the chimney,
was built entirely of wood, the walls being made of iron-bark slabs,
dressed very smooth, and laid horizontally; and the roof covered with
shingles, which are small pieces of wood, eighteen inches long and
about four inches wide, split out of iron-bark or stringy-bark wood. If
properly laid on, with sufficient pitch, shingles make about the best
roof possible for a hot climate; they are perfectly water tight, keep
out the heat, and last for many years. But there is a good deal of art
in laying them on, and unless it is done scientifically, they let the
water through like a sieve. The sitting-room was very well furnished,
with any amount of tables, pictures, bookshelves, armchairs, and above
all an excellent piano. Rice and my brother had been there for some
years, and had made the place very comfortable, and altogether hardly
what one would expect to find in the Bush.
Near the house stood the kitchen, with a cook’s room adjoining, and a
little covered way all overgrown with creepers, leading from it to the
house.
[Illustration: MOUNT SPENCER: HEAD STATION.]
About a hundred yards away were the rest of the station buildings,
consisting of two stocksmen’s houses, a store, a meathouse, the spare
hut in which I camped, the men’s kitchen, the blacksmith’s forge,
and the black boys’ hut, all slab buildings with shingle roofs; also
a large dovecot and a row of fowlhouses, surrounded by wire-netting
yards, and beyond these again the milking-yards, killing-yard,
calf-pens, and horseyards.
Having completed my round of the station, I had just arrived at the
rails of the horseyard, when I heard a sound like distant thunder away
down the horse-paddock. In a few seconds a mob of about seventy horses
came tearing down the track in a cloud of dust, with their tails in the
air, and dashed into the big yard, of which the slip rails were down.
Behind them came a black boy, cantering leisurely along, who proceeded
to put up the rails, and then, taking the saddle off the horse he was
riding, he turned him out in hobbles into the small paddock. All the
station-horses in use are run up every morning into the yards, and then
turned out again, when the stockmen have picked out those that they
require for the day.
Anyone would think that with seventy or eighty horses in the yard, and
only three or four men to ride, there would be plenty for everyone.
But a nearer inspection generally shows that at least half of them are
unavailable from sore backs or want of condition. No one ever yet saw
a cattle station that was not in a chronic state of being short of
horses, and it is easier for a stranger to squeeze blood out of a stone
than to borrow a horse from the manager.
Sore backs and girth-galls are the curse of Australian Bush-riding, and
are chiefly due to carelessness on the part of the riders. Of course
a horse fed entirely upon grass is much more liable to a sore back
than one which is fed upon corn. Then, again, they are never groomed,
and, therefore, their coats are very dirty. The colonial saddle, too,
is a shapeless cumbersome fabric, made of rough leather, with a high
pommel and cantel, and huge knee-pads, weighing on an average 20 lbs.
The greatest care is necessary to prevent such a diabolical machine
from giving a horse a sore back, but still it can be done. The chief
points to attend to are, always to brush a horse’s back before putting
the saddle on, to wash it and rub it dry after taking the saddle off,
and to keep the saddle-cloth scrupulously clean and soft. Few Bushmen
ever take the trouble to use these precautions, and the consequence
is that it is the rarest thing in the world to see a Bush horse over
three years old that has not got either a sore back or the mark of an
old sore. An English saddle seldom gives a horse a sore back; with
decent care, and all the time I was in the Colony I always used one,
unless I knew the horse I was going to ride was certain to buck, in
which case it is perfectly hopeless to try and stick on in an English
saddle. I have seen men ride very bad buck-jumpers barebacked, and I
have often _heard_ of men who could ride them in an English saddle, but
I never saw it done, and do not believe that it is possible. As long
as a horse bucks straight ahead it is all right enough, being no worse
than crossing a succession of high fences; but when he takes to bucking
sideways, and turning round as he bucks, I never saw anyone that could
stay on in an English saddle.
The performance of buck-jumping is a most extraordinary one to watch,
and still more extraordinary to feel underneath one. When seated on a
bucking horse the rider sees nothing whatever in front of him but the
pommel of the saddle, and feels rather as if he was assisting at an
earthquake or a railway accident. The performance is quite peculiar
to Australian horses, and no one who has not seen them at it would
believe the rapid contortions of which they are capable. In bucking,
a horse tucks his head right between his forelegs, sometimes striking
his jaw with his hind feet. The back, meantime, is arched like a boiled
prawn’s; and in this position the animal makes a series of tremendous
bounds, sometimes forwards, sometimes sideways and backwards, keeping
it up for several minutes with intervals of a few seconds, and
occasionally falling flat down and rolling over his rider if he fails
to get rid of him in any other way. Of course a “new chum” succumbs at
once to the movements of a buck-jumper, but, after a little practice,
anyone who keeps his nerve and sits back can easily learn to stick on
in a colonial saddle with big knee-pads to help him. With practice some
men become extraordinary hands at sitting rough horses, and a favourite
piece of “flashness” is to stick half-a-crown between each thigh and
the saddle, and keep it there while the horse is bucking.
The great art consists in getting cleverly on to a rowdy horse; for
it is before a man is fairly seated, just as he is swinging himself
on, that a horse is likely to get the best of him. An old hand draws
the reins tightly through his fingers, and takes hold of a piece of
the mane with the same hand to keep his horse’s head well in to his
neck, and then, with his face to the horse’s tail, he sneaks one foot
into the stirrup, and swings himself into his seat with the rapidity
of lightning. A great deal of practice is required to do this neatly,
and to avoid touching the horse with either foot during the act of
mounting, which would almost certainly start it bucking if it were that
way inclined.
The ordinary run of Bush horses show a great deal of breeding, but they
are generally deficient in bone, and the worst point about them is the
shoulder. You often come across a well-shaped one in every other point,
but the whole time that I was in the Bush I never saw a really pretty
pair of shoulders on a horse. They run about fifteen two in height,
and are very low in the wither, which accounts for the extraordinary
feat which I have several times witnessed, of a horse bucking its rider
and saddle over its head, without breaking the girths. But whatever
they may be to look at, horses raised in the Bush have generally a
good heart inside them, and the amount of work that they will do upon
nothing but grass is almost incredible.
A ride of a hundred miles from sunrise to sundown is no uncommon
performance, and there is a well-authenticated instance of a man who,
for a large bet, rode a pony a hundred miles in that time, and then
carried it a hundred yards. The unfortunate animal died, and the man
ought to have been knocked on the head for his cruelty, but the feat
stands recorded as showing what an Australian horse can do.
A still more remarkable performance was that of a son of Panic, bred
in Victoria, who carried his rider, Mr. Lord, 263 miles in three days,
88 miles on the first, 83 on the second, and 92 on the third. Mr. Lord
rode 14 st. 3 lb., and the journey was accomplished without any bad
effects upon the horse.
Considering the treatment that Bush horses get, it is wonderful how
they live at all. After a long hard day they are turned out, dripping
with sweat, into a cold winter’s night, where, perhaps, in a few hours
the temperature will be down to freezing point. They are ridden hard
after cattle, over stony ridges and black-soil bogs, and yet filled
legs and curbed hocks are unknown; and the whole time that I was in
Australia I never saw a broken-winded horse, or even a whistler. It is
very rare indeed to find a really pleasant horse to ride in the Bush.
They are all very badly broken in, and have nearly always had their
tempers spoiled when quite young, so that they generally have some
disagreeable tricks, and it is never safe to go near the heels of one
of them. There are men who make a living by breaking in young horses,
going round the stations and contracting to break in a mob at thirty
shillings a head. Considering the way in which it is done, it is no
wonder that Australian horses buck, and are generally vicious.
A lot of young ones are run into a yard, most of which have probably
never seen a man within a quarter of a mile since they were foals, and
have certainly never been in a yard more than once in their lives. The
horsebreaker picks out one, and with the help of another man runs it
into a small yard by itself. If the animal is not very nervous, with
a little patience he will be able to go up and handle it, and get a
bridle over its head. If all other ways fail, he has to lasso it. The
next thing is to sneak a saddle on to it, the wretched animal standing
shaking and shivering with fright the whole time. The horsebreaker is
most likely a man that no living horse can throw by any means short of
rolling on him; so he blindfolds the horse, and gets straight on to its
back. His mate removes the bandage from its eyes, and the rider sticks
the spurs into the horse, and makes it buck, till it cannot buck any
more. He then leaves it for a few hours with the saddle on, and having
repeated the process on two subsequent days, he hands it over to the
owner as broken in, and it is probably turned out for six months into
the Bush. It is real rough work breaking in young horses in this way,
and very few men stick at it for more than a year or two. Undoubtedly
the very worst man in the world to give a young horse to, to break in,
is a “flash” rider. He is not the least afraid of its bucking, and will
probably make it do so on purpose, in order to display his powers of
riding, or rather sticking on.
Bucking is a regular habit; and when once a horse acquires it he never
altogether loses it. The surest way to get a horse quietly and well
broken in is to give it to the most nervous and arrant funk you can
find, if he will undertake it. He will spend days in getting the horse
used to the vicinity of a man, and sit for hours on the top of a rail
alongside of it, to accustom it to seeing him above it, before ever he
attempts to get on its back, and the odds are that he will have it so
quiet by the time that he dares mount it, that it will never think of
bucking, except under extraordinary provocation, for the rest of its
life.
The proceedings of a “new chum,” as a recent arrival in the Colony
is called, are always a source of amusement to all old residents,
and nothing is more entertaining than his early struggles to catch
his horse in the yard. Having cornered it off, with the help of a
black boy, he advances towards it, in a hesitating, doubtful sort of
way, addressing it in soothing terms which are entirely thrown away
upon a Bush horse. The animal detects him instantly as a novice, and
prepares to take advantage of him by every trick that it knows. Jammed
up against the rails, in a corner of the yard, it stands, looking at
him as he approaches, with an expression in its eye and a droop of its
quarters that no one could mistake. When he gets up to it he probably
discovers that he has got the bridle over the wrong arm, and while he
is changing it the brute gives a frightful snort, rushes past him,
rolling him over in the dust, and gallops round and round the yard,
with its tail in the air. Once more he pins it up in a corner, and has
nearly got the bridle over its head when it gently turns its head away
and sticks it over the rails, where he cannot possibly reach it, at the
same time turning its quarters round, and lifting a hind foot, in a way
that causes its future rider to get out of focus as quickly as possible.
After a few more vain attempts the “new chum” looks imploringly round,
and one of the old hands gets down from the rails, where he has been
sitting enjoying the fun. Hanging the bridle over his left arm, he
walks straight up to the animal and addresses it with, “Stand up, you
crowbait!” in a tone that knocks all the folly out of it for the rest
of the morning. Bush horses are as cunning as foxes, and, unless they
are really rowdy, they never attempt to play the fool with men who are
used to handling them, so it caves in at once, and allows him to put
the bridle on without any further trouble.