VII

The portion of my days here in the bush which I like best (when no

bodily ill plagues me) is the very early morning. Directly daylight

comes, while yet the sun's Australian throne is vacant--all hung about

in cool, pearly draperies--I slip a waterproof over my pyjamas, having

first rolled up the legs of these garments and thrust my feet into

rubber half-boots, and wander out across the verandah, down through

the garden patch, over the road, with its three-inch coating of sandy

dust, and into the bush beyond, where every tiny leaf and twig and

blade of grass holds treasure trove and nutriment, in the form of

glistening dewdrops.

The early morning in the coastal belt of New South Wales is rapture

made visible and responsive to one's faculties of touch, and smell,

and hearing. And yet---no. I believe I have used the wrong word. It

would be rapture, belike, in a Devon coomb, or on a Hampshire hill-top.

Here it is hardly articulate or sprightly enough for rapture.

Rather, I should say, it is the perfection of pellucid serenity. It

lacks the full-throated eternal youthfulness of dawn in the English

countryside; but, for calmly exquisite serenity, it is matchless. To

my mind it is grateful as cold water is to a heated, tired body. It

smooths out the creases of the mind, and is wonderfully calming. Yet

it has none of the intimate, heart-stirring kindliness of England's

rural scenery. No untamed land has that. Nature may be grand,

inspiring, bracing, terrifying, what you will. She is never simply

kind and loving--whatever the armchair poets may say. A countryside

must be humanised, and that through many successive generations,

before it can lay hold upon your heart by its loving-kindness, and

draw moisture from your eyes. It is not the emotionless power of

Nature, but man's long-suffering patient toil in Nature's realm that

gives our English country-side this quality.

But my rugged, unkempt bush here is nobly serene and splendidly calm

in the dawn hours. It makes me feel rather like an ant, but a well-doing

and unworried ant. And I enjoy it greatly. As I stride among the

drenching scrub, and over ancient logs which, before I was born, stood

erect and challenged all the winds that blow, I listen for the sound

of his bell, and then call to my friend Punch:

'Choop! Choop! Choop, Punch! Come away, boy! Come away! Choop! Choop!'

But not too loudly, and not at all peremptorily. For I do not really

want him to come, or, at least, not too hurriedly. That would cut my

morning pleasure short. No; I prefer to find Punch half a mile from

home, and I think the rascal knows it. For sometimes I catch glimpses

of him between the tree-trunks--we have myriads of cabbage-tree palms,

tree-ferns, and bangalow palms, among the eucalypti hereabouts--and

always, if we are less than a quarter of a mile or so from home, it is

his rounded haunches that I see, and he is walking slowly away from

me, listening to my call, and doubtless grinning as he chews his

cud--a great ruminator is my Punch.

At other times, when it chances that dawn has found him a full half

mile from home, he does not walk away from me, but stands behind the

bole of a great tree, looking round its side, listening, waiting, and

studiously refraining from the slightest move in my direction, until I

am within twenty paces of him. Then, with a loud whinny, rather like a

child's 'Peep-bo!' in intent, I think, he will walk quickly up to me,

wishing me the top of the morning, and holding out his head for the

halter which I always carry on these occasions.

In the first months of our acquaintance I used to clamber on to his

back forthwith, and ride home. He knows I cannot quite manage that

now, and so walks with me, rubbing at my shoulders the while with his

grass-stained, dewy lips, till we see a suitable stump or log, from

which I can conveniently mount him. Then, with occasional thrusts

round of his head to nuzzle one of my ankles, or to snatch a tempting

bit of greenery, he carries me home, and together--for he superintends

this operation with the most close and anxious care, his foreparts

well inside the feed-house--we mix his breakfast, first in an old

four-gallon oil-can, and then in the manger, and I sit beside him and

smoke a cigarette till the meal is well under weigh.

I have made Punch something of a gourmand, and each meal has to

contain, besides its foundation of wheaten chaff and its _piece de

resistance_ of cracked maize, a flavouring of oats--say, three double

handfuls--and a thorough sprinkling, well rubbed in, of bran. If the

proportions are wrong, or any of the constituents of the meal lacking,

Punch snorts, whinnies, turns his rump to the manger, and demands my

instant attention. I was intensely amused one day when, sitting in the

slab and bark stable, through whose crevices seeing and hearing are

easy, to overhear the mail-man telling Mrs. Blades that, upon his Sam,

I was for all the world like an old maid with her canary in the way I

dry-nursed that blessed horse; by ghost, I was! He was particularly

struck, was this good man, by my insane practice of sometimes taking

Punch for a walk in the bush, as though he were a dog, and without

ever mounting him.

Punch provided for, my own ablutions are performed in the wood-shed,

where I have learned to bathe with the aid of a sponge and a bucket of

water, and have a shower worked by a cord connected with a perforated

nail-can. By this time my billy-can is probably spluttering over the

hearth, and I make tea and toast, after possibly eating an orange. And

so the day is fairly started, and I am free to think, to read, to

write, or to enjoy idleness, after a further chat with Punch when

turning him out to graze. My wood-chopping I do either before

breakfast or towards the close of the day; the latter, I think, more

often than the former. It makes a not unpleasant salve for the

conscience of a mainly idle man, after the super-fatted luxury of

afternoon tea and a biscuit or scone.

An Australian bushman would call my tea no more than water bewitched,

and my small pinch of China leaves in an infuser spoon but a mean

mockery of his own generous handful of black Indian leaves, well

stewed in a billy to a strength suited for hide-tanning. Of this inky

mixture he will cheerfully consume (several times a day) a quart, as

an aid to the digestion of a pound or two of corned beef, with pickles

and other deadly things, none of which seem to do him much harm. And

if they should, the result rather amuses and interests him than

otherwise; for, of all amateur doctors (and lawyers), he is the most

enthusiastic and ingenuous. He will tell you (with the emphatic winks,

nods, and gestures of a man of research who has made a wonderful

discovery, and, out of the goodness of his heart, means to let you

into the secret) of some patent medicine which is already advertised,

generally offensively, in every newspaper in the land; and, having

explained how it made a new man of him, will very likely insist with

kindly tyranny upon buying you a flagon of the costly rubbish.

'I assure you, Mr. Freydon, you won't know yourself after takin' a

bottle or two of Simpkins's Red Marvel.' I agree cordially, well

assured that in such a case I should not care to know myself. 'Why,

there was a chap down Sydney way, Newtown I think it was he lived in,

or it mighter bin Balmain. Crooil bad he was till they put him on to

the Red Marvel. Fairly puzzled the doctors, he did, an' all et up with

sores, somethin' horrible. Well, I tell you, I wouldn't be without a

bottle in my camp. Sooner go without 'baccy. An', not only that, but

it's such comfortin' stuff is the Red Marvel. Every night o' my life I

takes a double dose of it now; sick or sorry, well or ill--an' look at

me! I useter to swear by Blick's Backache Pills; but now, I wouldn't

have them on me mind. They're no class at all, be this stuff. Give me

Simpkins's Red Marvel, every time, an' I don't care if it snows! You

try it, Mr. Freydon. I was worsen you afore I struck it; an' now, why,

I wouldn't care to call the Queen me aunt!' (His father before him, in

Queen Victoria's reign, had no doubt used this quaint phrase, and it

was not for him to alter it because of any such trifling episodes as

the accession of other sovereigns.)