'Well, I don't know, sir. There won't be much left in a week if the

weather holds good,' makes answer the chief, as one who thought nothing

too stupendous to be accomplished by shearers; 'but I knew I'd forgot

something. As I'm here, I'll take a few dozen boxes of sardines, and a

case of pickled salmon. The boys likes 'em, and, murder alive! haven't

we forgot the plums and currants; a hundredweight of each, Mr. de Vere.

They'll be crying out for plum-duff and currant-buns for the afternoon,

and bullying the life out of me if I haven't a few trifles like. It's a

hard life, surely, a shearers' cook. Well, good-day, sir, you have 'em

all down in the book.'

Lest the reader should imagine that the rule of Mr. Gordon at Anabanco

was a reign of luxury and that waste which tendeth to penury, let him be

aware that shearers in Riverina are paid at a certain rate, usually that

of one pound per hundred sheep shorn. They agree, on the other hand, to

pay for all supplies consumed by them, at certain prices fixed before

the shearing agreement is signed. Hence it is entirely their own affair

whether their mess bills are extravagant or economical. They can have

everything within the rather wide range of the station store—_pâtés de

foie gras_, ortolans, roast ostrich, novels, top-boots, double-barrelled

guns, _if they like to pay for them_; with one exception—no wine, no

spirits! Neither are they permitted to bring these stimulants 'on to the

ground' for their private use. Grog at shearing? Matches in a

powder-mill! It's very sad and bad; but our Anglo-Saxon industrial

champion cannot be trusted with the fire-water. Navvies, men-of-war's

men, soldiers, _and_ shearers—fine fellows all. But though the younger

men might only drink in moderation, the majority of the elders are

utterly without self-control, once in the front of temptation. And wars,

'wounds without cause,' hot heads, shaking hands, delay, and bad

shearing, would be the inevitable result of spirits, _à la discrétion_.

So much is this a matter of certainty from experience, that a clause is

inserted and cheerfully signed in most shearing agreements, 'that any

man getting drunk or bringing spirits on to the station during shearing,

loses _the whole of the money_ earned by him.' The men know that the

restriction is for their benefit, as well as for the interest of the

master, and join in the prohibition heartily.

Let us give a glance at the small army of working-men assembled at

Anabanco—one out of hundreds of stations in the colony of New South

Wales, ranging from 100,000 sheep downwards. There are seventy shearers;

about fifty washers, including the men connected with the steam-engine,

boilers, bricklayers, etc.; ten or twelve boundary riders, whose duty it

is to ride round the large paddocks, seeing that the fences are intact,

and keeping a general look-out over the condition of the sheep; three or

four overseers; half-a-dozen young gentlemen acquiring a practical

knowledge of sheep-farming, or, as it is generally phrased, 'colonial

experience,' a comprehensive expression enough; a score or so of

teamsters, with a couple of hundred horses or bullocks waiting for the

high-piled wool-bales, which are loaded up and sent away almost as soon

as shorn; wool-sorters, pickers-up, pressers, yardsmen, extra shepherds.

It may easily be gathered from this outline what an 'army with banners'

is arrayed at Anabanco. While statistically inclined, it may be added

that the cash due for the shearing alone (less the mess-bill) amounts to

£17,000; for the washing (roughly), £400, exclusive of provisions

consumed, hutting, wood, water, cooking, etc. Carriage of wool, £1500.

Other hands from £30 to £40 per week. All of which disbursements take

place within eight to twelve weeks after the shears are in the first

sheep.

Tuesday arrives, 'big with fate.' As the sun tinges the far sky-line the

shearers are taking a slight refection of coffee and currant-buns, to

enable them to withstand the exhausting interval between six A.M. and

eight o'clock, when serious breakfast occurs. Shearers diet themselves

on the principle that the more they eat the stronger they must be.

Digestion, as preliminary to muscular development, is left to take its

chance. They certainly do get through a tremendous amount of work. The

whole frame is at its utmost tension, early and late. But the

preservation of health is due to natural strength of constitution rather

than to their profuse and unscientific diet. Half an hour after sunrise

Mr. Gordon walks quietly into the vast building which contains the sheep

and their shearers—called 'the shed,' _par excellence_. Everything is in

perfect cleanliness and order. The floor swept and smooth, with its

carefully planed boards of pale yellow aromatic pine. Small tramways,

with baskets for the fleeces, run the wool up to the wool-tables,

superseding the more general plan of handpicking. At each side of the

shed-floor are certain small areas, four or five feet square, such space

being found by experience to be sufficient for the postures and

gymnastics practised during the shearing of a sheep. Opposite each

square is an aperture, communicating with a long, narrow, paled yard,

outside of the shed. Through this each man pops his sheep when shorn,

where he remains in company with the others shorn by the same hand,

until counted out. This being done by the overseer or manager, supplies

a check upon hasty, unskilful work. The body of the woolshed, floored

with battens placed half an inch apart, is filled with the woolly

victims. This enclosure is subdivided into minor pens, of which each

fronts the place of two shearers, who catch from it till the pen is

empty. When this takes place, a man detailed for the purpose refills it.

As there are local advantages, an equal distribution of places is made

by lot.

On every subdivision stands a shearer, as Mr. Gordon walks, with an air

of calm authority, down the long aisle. Seventy men, chiefly in their

prime, the flower of the working-men of the colony, they are variously

gathered. England, Ireland, and Scotland are represented in the

proportion of one-third of the number; the balance is composed of

native-born Australians.

Among these last—of pure Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic descent—are to be

seen some of the finest men, physically considered, the race is capable

of producing. Taller than their British-born brethren, with softer

voices and more regular features, they inherit the powerful frames and

unequalled muscular development of the breed. Leading lives chiefly

devoted to agriculture, they enjoy larger intervals of leisure than are

permissible to the labouring classes of Europe. The climate is mild and

favourable to health. They have been accustomed from childhood to

abundance of the best food; opportunities of intercolonial travel are

common. Hence the Anglo-Australian labourer, without, on the one hand,

the sharpened eagerness which marks his Transatlantic cousin, has yet an

air of independence and intelligence, combined with a natural grace of

movement, unknown to the peasantry of Britain.

An idea is prevalent that the Australians are, as a race, physically

inferior to the British. It is asserted that they grow too fast, tend to

height and slenderness, and do not possess adequate stamina and muscle.

This idea is erroneous. The men reared in the cities on the sea-boards,

living sedentary lives in shops or counting-houses, are often pallid and

slight of form. Such are they who live under similar conditions all over

the world. But those youngsters who have followed the plough on the

upland farms, or lived a wilder life on the stations of the far

interior; who have had their fill of wheaten bread, chops, and steaks

since they could walk, and sniffed up the free bush breezes from

infancy, they are _men_—

Stout of heart and ready of hand,

As e'er drove prey from Cumberland

—a business, I may remark, at which many of them would have

distinguished themselves.

Take Abraham Lawson, as he stands there in a natural and unstudied

attitude, six feet four in his stockings, wide-chested, stalwart, with a

face like that of a Greek statue. Take Billy May, fair-haired, mild,

insouciant, almost languid, till you see him at work. Then, again, Jack

Windsor, handsome, saucy, and wiry as a bull-terrier; like him, with a

strong natural inclination for the combat; good for any man of his

weight or a trifle over, with the gloves or without.

It is curious to note how the old English practice of settling disputes

with nature's weapons has taken root in Australia. It would 'gladden the

sullen souls of defunct gladiators' to watch two lads, whose fathers had

never trodden Britain's soil, pull off their jackets, and go to work

'hammer and tongs' with the savage silence of the true island type.

It is now seven o'clock. Mr. Gordon moves forward. As he does so, every

man leans towards the open door of the pen, in front of which he stands.

The bell sounds. With the first stroke each one of the seventy men has

sprung upon a sheep; has drawn it out, placed its head across his knee,

and is working his shears, as if the 'last man out' was to be flogged.

Four minutes—James Steadman, who learned last year, has shorn down one

side of his sheep; Jack Holmes and Gundagai Bill are well down the other

side of theirs; when Billy May raises himself with a jerking sigh, and

releases his sheep, perfectly clean—shorn from the nose to the heels,

through the aperture of his separate enclosure. With the same effort

apparently he calls out 'Wool!' and darts upon another sheep. Drawing

this second victim across his knee, he buries his shear-point in the

long wool of its neck. A moment later (a lithe, eager boy having

gathered up fleece number one and tossed it into the tram-basket) he is

half-way down its side, the wool hanging in one fleece like a great

glossy mat, before you have done wondering whether he did really shear

the first sheep, or whether he had not a ready-shorn one in his coat

sleeve, like a conjurer. By this time Lawson and Windsor, Jack Holmes

and Gundagai Bill are 'out,' or finished, and the cry of 'Wool! wool!'

seems to run continuously up and down the long aisles of the shed, like

a single note upon some rude instrument. Now and then the refrain is

varied by 'Tar!' being shouted instead, when a piece of skin is snipped

off as well as the wool. Great healing properties are attributed to this

extract in the shed. And if a shearer slice off a piece of flesh from

his own person, as occasionally happens, he gravely anoints it with the

universal remedy, and considers that the onus then lies with Providence,

there being no more that man can do. Though little time is lost, the men

are by no means up to the speed which they will attain in a few days,

when in full practice and training. Their nerve and muscle will be then,

so to speak, at concert-pitch, while sheep after sheep will be shorn

with a precision and celerity almost magical to the unprofessional

observer.

The reader may here be informed that speed and completeness of

denudation are the grand desiderata in shearing. The employer thinks

principally of the latter, the shearer of the former. To adjust the

proportion equitably is one of the incomplete aspirations which torment

humanity. Hence the contest—old as human society—between labour and

capital.

This is the first day. According to old-established custom, a kind of

truce obtains. It is before the battle—the _salut_, when no hasty word

or too demonstrative action can be suffered by the canons of good taste.

Red Bill, Flash Jack, Jem the Scooper, and other roaring blades, more

famous for expedition than faithful manipulation, are shearing to-day

with a painstaking precision, as of men to whom character is everything.

Mr. Gordon marches softly up and down, regarding the shearers with a

paternal and gratified expression, occasionally hinting at slight

improvements of style, or expressing unqualified approval, as a sheep is

turned out shaven rather than shorn. All goes on well. Nothing is heard

but expressions of goodwill and enthusiasm for the general welfare. It

is a triumph of the dignity of labour.

One o'clock. Mr. Gordon moved to the bell and sounded it. At the first

stroke several men on their way to the pens stopped abruptly, and began

to put on their coats. One fellow of an alert nature had just finished

his sheep and was sharpening his shears, when his eye caught Mr.

Gordon's form in close proximity to the final bell. With a bound like a

wild-cat, he reached the pen and drew out his sheep a bare second before

the first stroke, amidst the laughter and congratulations of his

comrades. Another man had his hand on the pen-gate at the same instant,

but by the Median law was compelled to return sheepless. He was cheered,

but ironically. Those whose sheep were in an unfinished stage quietly

completed them, the others moving off to the dinner, where the board

literally smoked with abundance. An hour passed. The meal was concluded;

the smoke was over; and the more careful men were back in the shed

sharpening their shears by two o'clock. Punctually at that hour the bell

repeated its summons _da capo_. The warm afternoon gradually lengthened

its shadows; the shears clicked in tireless monotone; the pens filled

and became empty. The wool-presses yawned for the mountain of fleeces

which filled the bins in front of them, divided into various grades of

excellence, and continuously disgorged them, neatly, cubically packed

and branded.

At six o'clock the bell brought the day's work to a close. The sheep of

each man were counted in his presence, and noted down with scrupulous

care, the record being written in full and hung up for public inspection

in the shed next day. This important ceremony over, master and men,

manager, labourers, and supernumeraries betook themselves to their

separate abodes, with such avoidance of delay that in five minutes not a

soul was left in or near the great building lately so busy and populous,

except the boys who were sweeping up the floor. The silence of ages

seems to fall and settle upon it.

Next morning at a rather earlier hour every man is at his post. Business

is meant decidedly. Now commences the delicate and difficult part of the

superintendence which keeps Mr. Gordon at his post in the shed nearly

from daylight to dark for from eight to ten weeks. During the first day

he has formed a sort of gauge of each man's temper and workmanship. For

now and henceforth the natural bias of each shearer will appear. Some

try to shear too fast, and in their haste shear badly. Some are rough

and savage with the sheep, which do occasionally kick and become unquiet

at critical times, and, it must be confessed, are provoking enough. Some

shear fairly and handsomely to a superficial eye, but commit the

unpardonable offence of 'leaving wool on.' Some are deceitful, shearing

carefully when overlooked, but 'racing' and otherwise misbehaving

directly the eye of authority is diverted. These and many other tricks

and defects require to be noted and abated, quietly but firmly, by the

manager of the shed—firmly, because evil would develop and spread

ruinously if not checked; quietly, because immense loss might be

incurred by a strike. Shearing differs from other work in this wise—it

is work _against time_, more especially in Riverina. If the wool be not

off the backs of the sheep before November, all sorts of drawbacks and

destructions supervene. The spear-shaped grass seeds, specially formed

as if in special collusion with the evil one, hasten to bury themselves

in the wool and even in the flesh of the tender victims. Dust rises in

red clouds from the unmoistened, betrampled meadows, so lately verdurous

and flower-spangled. From snowy white to an unlovely bistre turn the

carefully-washed fleeces, causing anathemas from overseers and

depreciation from brokers. All these losses of temper, trouble, and

money become inevitable if shearing be protracted, it may be, beyond a

given week.

Hence, as in harvest with a short allowance of fair weather, discipline

must be tempered with diplomacy. Lose your temper, and be over

particular; off go Billy May, Abraham Lawson, and half-a-dozen of your

best men, making a weekly difference of two or three thousand sheep for

the remainder of the shearing. Can you not replace them? Not so! Every

shed in Riverina will be hard at work during this present month of

September and for every hour of October. Till that time not a shearer

will come to your gate, except, perhaps, one or two useless,

characterless men. Are you to tolerate bad workmanship? Not that either.

But try all other means with your men before you resort to harshness;

and be _quite_ certain that your sentence is just, and that you can

afford the defection.

So our friend Mr. Gordon, wise from tens of thousands of shorn sheep

that have been counted out past his steady eye, criticises temperately

but watchfully. He reproves sufficiently, but no more, any glaring

fault; makes his calculation as to who are really bad shearers, and can

be discharged without loss to the commonwealth; or who shear fairly and

can be coached up to a decent average. One division, slow, and good only

when slow, have to be watched lest they emulate 'the talent,' and so

come to grief. Then 'the talent' has to be mildly admonished from time

to time lest they force the pace, set a bad example, and lure the other

men on to 'racing.' This last leads to slovenly shearing, ill-usage of

the sheep, and general dissatisfaction.

Tact, temper, patience, and firmness are each and all necessary

attributes in that captain of industry who has the delicate and

responsible task of superintending a large woolshed. Hugh Gordon had

shown all in such proportion as would have made him a distinguished

person anywhere, had fortune not adjusted for him this particular

profession. Calm with the consciousness of strength, he was considerate

in manner as in nature, until provoked by glaring dishonesty or

incivility. Then the lion part of his nature awoke, so that it commonly

went ill with the aggressor. As this was matter of public report, he had

little occasion to spoil the repose of his bearing. Day succeeds day,

and for a fortnight the machinery goes on smoothly and successfully. The

sheep arrive at an appointed hour by detachments and regiments at the

wash-pen. They depart thence, like good boys on Saturday night, redolent

of soap and water, and clean to a fault—entering the shed white and

flossy as newly-combed poodles, to emerge on the way back to their

pasturage, slim, delicate, agile, with a bright black =A= legibly

branded with tar on their paper-white skins.

The Anabanco world—stiffish but undaunted—is turning out of bed one

morning. Ha! what sounds are these? and why does the room look so dark?

Rain, as I'm alive! 'Hurrah!' says Master Jack Bowles, one of the young

gentlemen. He is learning (more or less) practical sheep-farming,

preparatory to having (one of these days) an Anabanco of his own. 'Well,

this is a change, and I'm not sorry, for one,' quoth Mr. Jack. 'I'm

stiff all over. No one can stand such work long. Won't the shearers

growl? No shearing to-day, and perhaps none to-morrow either.' Truth to

tell, Mr. Bowles' sentiments are not confined to his ingenuous bosom.

Some of the shearers grumble at being stopped, 'just as a man was

earning a few shillings.' Those who are in top pace and condition don't

like it. But to many of the rank and file—working up to and a little

beyond their strength—with whom swelled wrists and other protests of

nature are becoming apparent, it is a relief. They are glad of the

respite. At dinner-time all the sheep in the sheds, put in overnight in

anticipation of such a contingency, are reported shorn. All hands then

are idle for the rest of the day. The shearers dress and avail

themselves of various resources. Some go to look at their horses, now in

clover or its equivalent, in the Riverina graminetum. Some play cards,

others wash or mend their clothes. A large proportion of the

Australians, having armed themselves with paper, envelopes, and a

shilling's worth of stamps from the store, bethink themselves of

neglected or desirable correspondents. Many a letter for Mrs. Leftalone,

Wallaroo Creek, or Miss Jane Sweetapple, Honeysuckle Flat, as the case

may be, will find its way into the post-bag to-morrow. A pair of the

youngsters are having a round or two with the gloves; while to complete

the variety of recreations compatible with life at a woolshed, a

selected troupe are busy in the comparative solitude of that building,

at a rehearsal of a tragedy and a farce, with which they intend, the

very next rainy day, to astonish the population of Anabanco.

At the home station a truce to labour's 'alarms' is proclaimed, except

in the case and person of Mr. De Vere. So far is he from participation

in the general holiday, that he finds the store thronged with shearers,

washers, and 'knockabout men,' who, being let loose, think it would be

nice to go and buy something. He therefore grumbles slightly at having

no rest like other people.

'That's all very fine,' says Mr. Jack Bowles, who, seated on a case, is

smoking a large meerschaum and mildly regarding all things; 'but what

have you got to do when we're all _hard at work_ at the shed?' with an

air of great importance and responsibility.

'That's right, Mr. Bowles,' chimes in one of the shearers; 'stand up for

the shed. I never see a young gentleman work as hard as you do.'

'Bosh!' growls De Vere; 'as if anybody couldn't gallop about from the

shed to the wash-pen, and carry messages, and give half of them wrong!

Why, Mr. Gordon said the other day he should have to take you off and

put on a Chinaman—that he couldn't make more mistakes.'

'All envy and malice and t'other thing, De Vere, because you think I'm

rising in the profession,' returns the good-natured Bowles. 'Mr.

Gordon's going to send 20,000 sheep, after shearing, to the Lik Lak

paddock, and he said I should go in charge.'

'Charge be hanged!' laughs De Vere (with two very bright-patterned

Crimean shirts, one in each hand, which he offers to a tall young

shearer for inspection). 'There's a well there, and whenever either of

the two men, of whom you'll have _charge_, gets sick or runs away,

you'll have to work the whim in his place, till another man's sent out,

if it's a month.'

This appalling view of station promotion rather startles Mr. Bowles, who

applies himself to his meerschaum, amid the ironical comments of the

shearers. However, not easily daunted, or 'shut up,' according to the

more familiar station phrase, he rejoins, after a brief interval of

contemplation, that 'accidents will happen, you know, De Vere, my

boy—_apropos_ of which moral sentiment, I'll come and help you in your

dry-goods business; and then, look here, if _you_ get ill or run away,

I'll have a profession to fall back upon.' This is held to be a Roland

of sufficient pungency for De Vere's Oliver. Every one laughed. And the

two youngsters betook themselves to a humorous puffing of the

miscellaneous contents of the store: tulip beds of gorgeous Crimean

shirts, boots, books, tobacco, canvas slippers, pocket-knives, Epsom

salts, pipes, pickles, pain-killer, pocket-handkerchiefs, and pills,

sardines, saddles, shears, and sauces; in fact, everything which every

kind of man might want, and which apparently every man did want, for

large and various were the purchases, and great the flow of

conversation. Finally, after everything had been severely and accurately

debited to the purchasers, the store was cleared and locked up. A store

is a necessity of a large station; not by any means because of the

profit upon goods sold, but it obviously would be bad economy for old

Bill the shepherd, or Barney the bullock-driver, to visit the next

township, from ten to twenty miles distant, as the case may be, every

time the former wanted a pound of tobacco, or the latter a pair of

boots. They might possibly obtain these necessary articles as good in

quality, as cheap in price. But there are wolves in that wood, oh, my

weak brothers! In every town dwells one of the 'sons of the giant'—the

Giant Grog—red-eyed, with steel muscles and iron claws; once in these,

which have held many and better men to the death, Barney nor Bill

emerges not, save pale, fevered, nerveless, and impecunious. So arose

the station store. Barney befits himself with boots without losing his

feet; Bill fills his pockets with match-boxes and smokes the pipe of

sobriety, virtuous perforce till his carnival, _after_ shearing.

The next day was wet, and threatened broken weather. Matters were not

too placid with the shearers. A day or two for rest is all very well,

but continuous wet weather means compulsory idleness, and gloom succeeds

repose; for not only are all hands losing time and earning no money, but

they are, to use the language of the stable, 'eating their heads off'

the while. The rather profuse mess and general expenditure, which caused

little reflection when they were earning at the rate of two or three

hundred a year, became unpleasantly suggestive now that all was going

out and nothing coming in. Hence loud and deep rose the anathemas, as

the discontented men gazed sadly or wrathfully at the misty sky.

A few days' showery weather having well-nigh driven our shearers to

desperation, out comes the sun in all his glory. He is never far away or

very faint in Riverina.

All the pens are filled for the morrow; very soon after the earliest

sunbeams, the bell sounds its welcome summons, and the whole force

tackles to the work with an ardour proportioned to the delay, every man

working as if for the ransom of his family from slavery. These men work,

spurred on by the double excitement of acquiring social reputation and

making money rapidly. Not an instant is lost; not a nerve, limb, or

muscle doing less than the hardest taskmaster could flog out of a slave.

Occasionally you see a shearer, after finishing his sheep, walk quietly

out, and not appearing for a couple of hours, or perhaps not again

during the day. Do not put him down as a sluggard; be assured that he

has tasked Nature dangerously hard, and has only just given in before

she does. Look at that silent, slight youngster, with a bandage round

his swollen wrist. Every 'blow' of the shears is agony to him, yet he

disdains to give in, and has been working 'in distress' for hours. The

pain is great, as you can see by the flush which surges across his brown

face, yet he goes on manfully to the last sheep, and endures to the very

verge of fainting.

A change in the manner and tone of the shed is apparent towards the end

of the day. It is now the ding-dong of the desperate fray, when the

blood of the fierce animal man is up, when mortal blows are exchanged,

and curses float upwards with the smoke and dust. The ceaseless clicking

of the shears—the stern earnestness of the men, toiling with feverish,

tireless energy—the constant succession of sheep shorn and let go,

caught and commenced—the occasional savage oath or passionate gesture,

as a sheep kicked and struggled with perverse, delaying obstinacy—the

cuts and stabs, with attendant effusion of blood, both of sheep and

shearers—the brief decided tones of Mr. Gordon, in repression or

command—all told the spectator that tragic action was introduced into

the performance; indeed, one of the minor excitements of shearing was

then and there transacted. Mr. Gordon had more than once warned a dark,

sullen-looking man that he did not approve of his style of shearing. He

was temporarily absent, and on his return found the same man about to

let go a sheep, whose appearance, as a shorn wool-bearing quadruped, was

painful and discreditable in the extreme.

'Let your sheep go, my man,' said he, in a tone which arrested the

attention of the shearers; 'but don't trouble yourself to catch

another.'

'Why not?' said the delinquent sulkily.

'You know very well why not!' said Gordon, walking closely up to him,

and looking straight at him with eyes that began to glitter. 'You've had

fair warning; you've not chosen to take it. Now you can go!'

'I suppose you'll pay a man for the sheep he's shorn?' growled out the

ruffian.

'Not one shilling until after shearing. You can come then, if you like,'

answered Mr. Gordon with perfect distinctness.

The bully looks savage; but the tall, powerful frame and steady eye were

not inviting for personal arbitration of the matter in hand. He puts up

his two pairs of shears, takes up his coat, and walks out of the shed.

The time was past when Red Bill or Terrible Dick (ruffians whom a sparse

labour market rendered necessary evils) would have flung down his shears

on the floor and told the manager that if he didn't like that shearing

he could shear his —— sheep himself and be hanged to him; or, on refusal

of instant payment, would have proposed to bury his shears in the

intestines of his employer, by way of adjusting the balance between

Capital and Labour. Wild tales are told of woolshed rows. One squatter

at least was stabbed mortally with that fatal and too convenient weapon,

a shear-blade.

The man thus summarily dealt with could, like most of his companions,

shear very well if he took pains. Keeping to a moderate number of sheep,

his workmanship could be good; but he must needs try and keep up with

Billy May or Abraham Lawson, who can shear from a hundred to a hundred

and thirty sheep per day, and do them beautifully. So in 'racing' he

works hastily and badly, cuts the skin of his luckless sheep, and leaves

wool here and there on them, grievous and exasperating to behold. So

sentence of expulsion goes forth fully against him. Having arrayed

himself for the road, he makes one more effort for a settlement and some

money wherewith to pay for board and lodgings on the road. Only to have

a mad carouse at the nearest township, however; after which he will tell

a plausible story of his leaving the shed on account of Mr. Gordon's

temper, and avail himself of the usual free hospitality of the bush to

reach another shed. He addresses Mr. Gordon with an attempt at

conciliation and deference:

'It seems very 'ard, sir, as a man can't get the trifle of money coming

to him, which I've worked 'ard for.'

'It's very hard you won't try and shear decently,' retorts Mr. Gordon,

by no means conciliated. 'Leave the shed!'

Ill-conditioned rascal as he is, he has a mate or travelling-companion

in whose breast exists some rough ideas of fidelity. He now takes up the

dialogue.

'I suppose if Jim's shearing don't suit, mine won't either.'

'I did not speak to you,' answered Mr. Gordon, as calmly as if he had

expected the speech; 'but of course you can go too.' He said this with

an air of studied unconcern, as if he would rather like a dozen more men

to knock off work. The two men walk out; but the epidemic does not

spread; and several take the lesson home and mend their ways

accordingly.

The weather is now splendid. Not a cloud specks the bright blue sky. The

shearers continue to work at the same express-train pace; fifty bales of

wool roll every day from the wool-presses; as fast as they reach that

number they are loaded upon one of the numerous drays and waggons which

have been waiting for weeks. Tall brown men have been recklessly cutting

up hides for the last fortnight, wherewith to lash the bales securely.

It is considered safer practice to load wool as soon as may be; fifty

bales represent about a thousand pounds sterling. In a building, however

secure, should a fire break out, a few hundred bales are easily burned;

but once on the dray, this much-dreaded _edax rerum_ in a dry country

has little chance. The driver, responsible to the extent of his freight,

generally sleeps under his dray; hence both watchman and insulation are

provided.

The unrelaxing energy with which work is pushed at this stage is

exciting and contagious. At or before daylight every soul in the great

establishment is up. The boundary riders are always starting off for a

twenty or thirty mile ride, and bringing tens of thousands of sheep to

the wash-pen; at that huge lavatory, there is splashing and soaking all

day with an army of washers; not a moment is lost from daylight till

dark, or used for any purpose save the all-engrossing work and needful

food. At nine o'clock P.M. luxurious dreamless sleep obtains, given only

to those whose physical powers have been taxed to the utmost, and who

can bear without injury the daily tension.

Everything and everybody is in splendid working order, nothing is out of

gear. Rapid and regular as a steam-engine the great host of toilers

moves onward daily, with a march promising an early completion. Mr.

Gordon is not in high spirits, for so cautious and far-seeing a captain

rarely feels himself so independent of circumstances as to indulge in

that reckless mood, but much satisfied with the prospect. Whew! the

afternoon darkens, and the night is given over to waterspouts and

hurricanes, as it appears. Next day is raw, gusty, with chill heavy

showers, drains to be cut, roofs to be seen to, shorn sheep shivering,

washers all playing pitch-and-toss, shearers sulky; everybody but the

young gentlemen wearing an injured expression of countenance. 'Looks as

if it would rain for a month,' says Long Jack. 'If we hadn't been

delayed, might have had the shearing over by this.' Reminded that there

are 50,000 sheep yet remaining to be shorn, and that by no possibility

could they have been finished; answers, 'He supposes so, always the

same, everything sure to go agin the pore man.' The weather does not

clear up. Winter seems to have taken thought, and determined to assert

his rights even in this land of eternal summer. The shed is filled, and

before the sheep so kept dry are shorn, down comes the rain again. Not a

full day's shearing for ten days. Then the clouds disappear as if the

curtain of a stage had been rolled up, and lo! the golden sun, fervid

and impatient to obliterate the track of winter.

On the first day after the recommencement, matters go much as usual.

Steady work and little talk; every one is apparently anxious to make up

for lost time. But on the second morning after breakfast, when the bell

sounds, instead of the usual cheerful dash at the sheep, every man

stands silent and motionless in his place. Some one uttered the words

'Roll up!' Then the seventy men converge, and slowly, but with one

impulse, walk to the end of the shed, where stands Mr. Gordon.

The concerted action of any large body of men bears with it an element

of power which commands respect. The weapons of force and number are

theirs; at their option to wield with or without mercy. At one period of

Australian colonisation a superintendent in Mr. Gordon's position might

have had good ground for uneasiness. Mr. Jack Bowles sees in it an

_émeute_ of a democratic and sanguinary nature; regrets deeply his

absent revolver, but draws up to his leader, prepared to die by his

side. That calm centurion feels no such serious misgivings. He knows

there had been dire grumbling among the shearers, in consequence of the

weather. He knows of malcontents among them. He is prepared for some

sort of demand on their part, and has concluded to make moderate

concessions. So, looking cheerfully at the men, he quietly awaits the

deputation. As they near him there is some hesitation; then three

delegates come to the front. These are old Ben, Abraham Lawson, and

Billy May. Ben Thornton had been selected from his age and long

experience of the rights and laws of the craft. A weather-beaten, wiry

old Englishman, his face and accent, darkened as the former is by the

Australian summers of half a century, still retain the trace of his

native Devonshire. It is his boast that he had shorn for forty years,

and as regularly 'knocked down' (or spent in a single debauch) his

shearing money. Lawson represents the small free-holders, being a

steady, shrewd fellow, and one of the fastest shearers. Billy May stands

for the fashion and 'talent,' being the 'Ringer,' or fastest shearer of

the whole assembly, and as such truly admirable and distinguished.

'Well now, men,' quoth Mr. Gordon, cheerily meeting matters half-way,

'what's it all about?' The younger delegates look at old Ben, who, now

that it was 'demanded of him to speak the truth,' or such dilution

thereof as might seem most favourable to the interests of the shed,

found a difficulty, like many wiser men, about his exordium.

'Well, Muster Gordon, look'ee here, sir. The weather's been summat

awful, and clean agin' shearin'. We've not been earning our grub, and——'

'So it has,' answered the manager, 'so it has; but can I help the

weather? I'm as anxious as you are to have the shearing over quickly.

We're both of us of one mind about that, eh?'

'That's right enough, sir,' strikes in Abraham Lawson, feeling that Ben

was getting the worst of the argument, and was moreover far less fluent

than usual, probably from being deprived of the aid of the customary

expletives; 'but we're come to say this, sir, that the season's turned

out very wet indeed; we've had a deal of broken time, and the men feel

it hard to be paying for a lot of rations, and hardly earning anything.

We're shearing the sheep very close and clean. You won't have 'em done

no otherways. Not like some sheds where a man can "run" a bit and make

up for lost time. Now, we've all come to think this, sir, that if we're

to go on shearing the sheep well, and stick to them, so as to get them

done before the dust and grass-seed come in, you ought to make us some

allowance. We know we've agreed for so much a hundred, and all that.

Still, the season's turned out so out-and-out bad, and we hope you'll

consider it and make it up to us somehow.'

'Never knew a worse year,' corroborated Billy May, who thought it

indispensable to say something; 'haven't made enough, myself, to pay the

cook.'

This was not strictly true, at any rate, as to Master Billy's own

earnings; he being such a remarkably fast shearer (and good withal),

that he had always a respectable sum credited to him for his day's work,

even when many of the slower men came off short enough. However, enough

had been said to make Mr. Gordon fully comprehend the case. The men were

dissatisfied. They had come in a roundabout way to the conclusion that

some concession, not mentioned in their bond, should come from the side

of Capital to that of Labour. Whether wages, interest of capital, share

of profits or reserved fund, they knew not, nor cared. This was their

stand. And being Englishmen they intended to abide by it.

The manager had considered the situation before it actually arose. He

now rapidly took in the remaining points of debate. The shearers had

signed a specific agreement for a stipulated rate of payment,

irrespective of the weather. By the letter of the law they had no case.

Whether they made little or much profit was not his affair. But he was a

just and kindly man, as well as reasonably politic. They had shorn well,

and the weather had been discouraging. He knew, too, that an abrupt

denial might cause a passive mutiny, if not a strike. If they set

themselves to thwart him, it was in their power to shear badly, to shear

slowly, and to force him to discharge many of them. He might have them

fined, perhaps imprisoned by the police court. Meanwhile how could

shearing go on? Dust and grass-seeds would soon be upon them. He

resolved on a compromise, and spoke out at once in a decided tone, as

the men gathered yet more closely around him.

'Look here, all of you! You know well that I'm not bound to find you in

good shearing weather. Still, I'm aware that the season has been against

you; you have shorn pretty well, so far, though I've had to make

examples, and am quite ready to make more. What I am willing to do is

this: to every man who works on till the finish, and shears to my

satisfaction, I will make a fair allowance in the ration account. That

is, I will make no charge for the beef. Does that suit you? There was a

chorus of 'All right, sir, we're satisfied.' 'Mr. Gordon always does the

fair thing,' etc. And work was immediately resumed with alacrity.

The clerk of the weather, too gracious even in these regions, as far as

the absence of rain is concerned, became steadily propitious.

Cloudless skies and a gradually ascending thermometer were the signs

that spring was changing into summer. The splendid herbage ripened and

dried; patches of bare earth began to be discernible amid the late

thick-swarded pastures, dust to rise, and cloud-pillars of sand to float

and eddy—the desert genii of the Arab. But the work went on at a high

rate of speed, outpacing the fast-coming summer; and before any serious

disaster arose, the last flock was 'on the battens,' and amid ironical

congratulations the 'cobbler' (or last sheep) was seized, and stripped

of his dense and difficult fleece. In ten minutes the vast woolshed,

lately echoing with the ceaseless click of the shears, the jests, the

songs, the oaths of the rude congregation, was silent and deserted. The

floors were swept, the pens closed, the sheep on their way to a distant

paddock. Not a soul remains about the building but the pressers, who

stay to work at the rapidly lessening piles of fleece in the bins, or a

meditative teamster who sits musing on a wool-bale, absorbed in a

calculation as to when his load will be made up.

It is sundown, a rather later time of closing than usual, but rendered

necessary by the possibility of the grand finale. The younger men troop

over to the hut, larking like schoolboys. Abraham Lawson throws a poncho

over his broad shoulders, lights his pipe, and strides along, towering

above the rest, erect and stately as a guardsman. Considerably more than

you or I, reader, would have been, had we shorn a hundred and

thirty-four sheep, as he has done to-day. Billy May has shorn a hundred

and forty-two, and he puts his hand on the four-foot paling fence of the

yard and vaults over it like a deer, preparatory to a swim in the creek.

At dinner you will see them all, with fresh Crimeans and jerseys, clean,

comfortable, and in grand spirits. Next morning is settling day. The

book-keeping department at Anabanco being severely correct, all is in

readiness. Each man's tally, or number of sheep shorn, has been entered

daily to his credit. His private and personal investments at the store

have been as duly debited. The shearers, as a corporation, have been

charged with the multifarious items of their rather copious mess-bill.

This sum-total is divided by the number of the shearers, the extract

being the amount for which each man is liable. This sum varies in its

weekly proportion, at different sheds. With an extravagant cook, or

cooks, the weekly bill is often alarming. When the men and their

functionary study economy, it may be kept reasonably low.

The men have been sitting or standing about the office for half an hour,

when Mr. Jack Bowles rushes out and shouts, 'William May.' That young

person, excessively clean, attired in a quiet tweed suit, with his hair

cut correctly short, advances with an air of calm intrepidity, and faces

Mr. Gordon, now seated at a long table, wearing a judicial expression of

countenance.

'Well, May! here's your account:—

So many sheep at £1 per 100 £

Cook, so many weeks £

Shearing store account

Private store account

———

———

Total £

======

Is the tally of your sheep right?'

'Oh, I daresay it's all right, Mr. Gordon. I made it so and so; about

ten less.'

'Well, well; ours is correct, no doubt. Now, I want to make up a good

subscription for the hospital this year. How much will you give? You've

done pretty well, I think.'

'Put me down a pound, sir.'

'Very well, that's fair enough. If every one gives what they can afford,

you men will always have a place to go to when you're hurt or laid up.

See, I put your name down, and you'll see it in the published list. Now,

about the shearing, May. I consider that you have done your work

excellently well, and behaved well all through. You're a fast shearer,

but you shear closely, and don't knock your sheep about. I therefore do

not charge you for any part of your meat bill, and I pay you at the rate

of half-a-crown a hundred for all your sheep, _over and above_ your

agreement. Will that do?'

'Very well indeed, and I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Gordon.'

'Well, good-bye, May. Always call when you're passing, and if any work

is going on you'll get your share. Here's your cheque. Send in Lawson.'

Exit May in high spirits, having cleared about three pounds per week

during the whole time of shearing, and having lived a far from

unpleasant life, indeed akin to that of a fighting cock, from the

commencement to the end of that period.

Lawson's interview may be described as having similar results. He also

was a first-class shearer, though not so artistic as the gifted Billy.

Jack Windsor's saucy blue eyes twinkled merrily as he returned to his

companions, and incontinently leaped into the saddle on his wild-eyed

colt. After these worthies came a shearer named Jackson. He belonged to

quite a different class; he could shear well if he pleased, but had a

rooted disbelief that honesty was the best policy, and a fixed

determination to shear as many sheep as he could get the manager to

pass. By dint of close watching, constant reprimand, and occasional

'raddling' (marking badly shorn sheep and refusing to count them), Mr.

Gordon had managed to tone him down to average respectability of

execution; still he was always uneasily aware that whenever his eye was

not upon him, Jackson was doing what he ought not to do, with might and

main. He had indeed kept him on from sheer necessity, but he intended

none the less to mark his opinion of him.

'Come in, Jackson. Your tally is so and so. Is that right?'

_Jackson._—'I suppose so.'

'Cook and store account, so much; shearing account so much.'

_Jackson._—'And a good deal too.'

'That is your affair,' said Mr. Gordon, sternly enough. 'Now, look here,

you're in my opinion a bad shearer and a bad man. You have given me a

great deal of trouble, and I should have kicked you out of the shed

weeks ago, if I had not been short of men. I shall make a difference

between you and those who have tried to do their best; I make you no

allowance of any sort; I pay you by the strict agreement; there's your

cheque. Now, go!'

Jackson goes out with a very black countenance. He mutters, with an

oath, that, if he'd known how he was going to be served 'he'd 'a

"blocked" 'em a little more.' He is believed to have been served right,

and he secures no sympathy whatever. Working-men of all classes in

Australia are shrewd and fair judges generally. If an employer does his

best to mete out justice, he is always appreciated and supported by the

majority. These few instances will serve as a description of the whole

process of settling with the shearers. The horses have been got in.

Great catching and saddling-up has taken place all the morning. By the

afternoon the whole party are dispersed to the four winds: some, like

Abraham Lawson and his friends, to sheds 'higher up,' in a colder

climate, where shearing necessarily commences later. From these they

will pass to others, until the last flocks in the 'mountain runs' are

shorn. Those who have not farms of their own then betake themselves to

reaping. Billy May and Jack Windsor are quite as ready to back

themselves against time in the wheat-field as on the shearing-floor.

Harvest over, they find their pockets inconveniently full, so they

commence to visit their friends and repay themselves for their toils by

a liberal allowance of rest and recreation.

Old Ben and a few other specimens of the olden time get no further than

the nearest public-house. Their cheques are handed to the landlord, and

a 'sdubendous and derrible spree' sets in. At the end of a week or ten

days, that worthy informs them that they have received liquor to the

amount of their cheques—something over a hundred pounds—save the mark!

They meekly acquiesce, as is their custom. The landlord generously

presents them with a glass of grog each, and they take the road for the

next shed.

The shearers being despatched, the sheep-washers, a smaller and less

regarded force, file up. They number some forty men. Nothing more than

fair bodily strength, willingness, and obedience being required in their

case, they are more easy to get and replace than shearers. They are a

varied and motley lot. That powerful and rather handsome man is a New

Yorker, of Irish parentage. Next to him is a slight, neat, quiet

individual. He had been a lieutenant in a line regiment. The lad in the

rear was a Sandhurst cadet. Then came two navvies and a New Zealander,

five Chinamen, a Frenchman, two Germans, Tin Pot, Jerry, and

Wallaby—three aboriginal blacks. There are no invidious distinctions as

to caste, colour, or nationality. Every one is a man and a brother at

sheep-washing. Wage, one pound per week; wood, water, tents, and food

provided. Their accounts are simple: so many weeks, so many pounds;

store accounts, so much. Hospital? Well, five shillings. Cheque;

good-morning.

The wool-pressers, the fleece-rollers, the fleece-pickers, the yardsmen,

the washers' cooks, the hut cooks, the spare shepherds—all these and

other supernumeraries, inevitable at shearing-time, having been paid

off, the snowstorm of cheques which has been fluttering all day comes to

an end. Mr. Gordon and the remaining _sous-officiers_ go to rest that

night with much of the mental strain removed, which has been telling on

every waking moment for the last two months.

The long train of drays and waggons, with loads varying from twenty to

forty-five bales, has been moving off in detachments since the

commencement. In a day or two the last of them will have rolled heavily

away. The 1400 bales, averaging three and a half hundredweight, are

distributed, slow journeying, along the road, which they mark from afar,

or standing huge and columnar, like guide tumuli, from Anabanco to the

waters of the Murray. Between the two points, a hundred and fifty miles,

there is neither a hill nor a stone. All is one vast monotonous sea of

plain—at this season a prairie-meadow exuberant of vegetation; in the

late summer, or in the occasional and dreaded phenomenon of a _dry

winter_, dusty and herbless as a brickfield, for hundreds of miles.

Silence falls on the plains and waters of Anabanco for the next six

months. The woolshed, the wash-pen, and all the huts connected with them

are lone and voiceless as caravanserais in a city of the plague.

ANCIENT SYDNEY

Our good barque anchored in Launceston harbour in 1831—about the same

year, by the way, in which Marcus Clarke's dream-ship, the _Malabar_,

ended her eventful voyage to the same port. The writer's father owned

and commanded the vessel. Our steerage passengers were of the same class

as those of the _Malabar_, being a draft of convicts, in process of

deportation to the strange South land, there to undergo experimental

discipline, which to some meant probationary industry—the path to a

prospective fortune; to others, a slave's dread life, a felon's shameful

death.

Ruffians doubtless cursed and caballed among the two hundred prisoners

which crowded the lower deck, but they were in a minority. A herd of

luckless peasants constituted the main body; found guilty of

rick-burning and machine-breaking only—crimes common enough in England,

before the repeal of the corn-laws.

Their offences had been but the ignorant, instinctive protest of Labour

against Capital; less dangerous far than the organised communism of the

present day. Poachers and petty larcenists, with other humble criminals,

completed the list. For the most part they were a timid and obedient

company, cowed and unresisting, incapable of planning mutiny or revenge.

Our family party consisted of two tiny sisters and myself, my mother,

and our nursemaid—a resolute, sterling Englishwoman, destined in days to

come to be the best friend our childhood could have found in the new

world or the old. The ordinary military guard, so many rank and file,

with their officers, together with the Surgeon-Superintendent, had been

detailed for the duty of ensuring discipline and the safety of the ship.

It may well have been that among the band of exiles were some unjustly

sentenced, mixed up accidentally with a crowd of excited rustics engaged

in unlawful deeds—wondering spectators rather than actors. Such a victim

was probably the unhappy Annetts, a vacant-faced farm labourer, from

Essex or Dorset, whose wife, accompanied by their two children, came

daily to see him before the ship sailed.

I seem to remember the wretched group, though most probably it was my

good nurse's description that imprinted it indelibly on my memory.

There would they sit, hour after hour, bathed in tears—he, with the

irons on his limbs and the ugly prison garb; she almost a girl, with

traces of rustic beauty, as he was hardly more than a boy—holding each

other's hands and weeping silently for hours; then, sobbing in paroxysms

of lamentation, both repeatedly declaring his innocence, the children

wondering gravely at the strange surroundings, at times mingling their

tears with those of their parents. It was a sight to touch the heart of

the sternest. Then the last agonised parting, when the fainting woman

was carried on shore, when the hopeless outcast watched his native land

recede, instinctively aware that he gazed on it for the last time.

Is there such a physiological process as a broken heart? It would seem

so, even in this world of lightly-borne sorrows and forgotten joys. He,

at least, was not thus fashioned, stolid peasant as he seemed to outward

view, untaught, uncared-for, born to the plough and the monotonous

labour of the farm animals, which in his undeveloped intelligence he so

closely resembled. But their fidelity to the heart's deepest feelings

was rooted in his being. He never raised his head afterwards, as the

phrase goes. He moved and spoke, went through the ordinary motions of

humanity, as in a dream. Day by day he pined and wasted; in little more

than a month, from no particular ailment, he died and found burial in

that mysterious main which before his sentence he had never seen.

The only other death on board was that of the second mate, a fine young

seaman named Keeling. Strange to say, he had a presentiment that

drowning would be the manner of his end. He would say as much, on one

occasion telling us that he was one of three brothers. Two had been lost

at sea. He _knew_ the same fate was in store for him. He even put his

head in a bucket of water once, and held it there, 'to see how it felt.'

He was strong, active, temperate, and a smart officer. One day, in calm

weather, when spearing fish from the dolphin-striker, he lost his

balance and fell overboard. The ship had way on, though the breeze was

light. He was a good swimmer; a boat was instantly lowered. I believe

that my recollection of seeing him rise and fall upon the waves, far

astern of the vessel, is accurate. The boat rapidly nears him—swimming

strongly and easily supporting himself. It turns for a moment, shutting

him out from sight. A man leans over to grasp him. Why do they commence

to pull round in circles? Why can we not see the rescued man taken into

the boat? After an interval which appears terribly long, the boat comes

back to the ship _without him_. At the very moment of rescue a wave

drove the boat stem on. The keel struck him on the head. He sank like a

stone, never being visible to the boat's crew afterwards. Thus was his

doom accomplished.

Though our passengers did not resemble those of the _Malabar_, we

boasted a similar military force. The Surgeon-Superintendent was a

much-travelled, cultured man. The Major and Subalterns in charge of the

detachment were agreeable personages; fortunately they were not required

to act in any military capacity beyond causing guards to be strictly

kept. Had the prisoners even been other than they were, their chance in

rising would have been small, having to deal with one of the most

watchful, prompt, and determined men, in the captain of the vessel, that

ever trod a plank. It was happily ordered otherwise. The voyage was

successful and devoid of adventure. There were neither storms, mutinies,

fevers, nor other disasters. And somewhere about the month of August (as

we left England in April 1831) we delivered our passengers to the

authorities in Launceston, in good order and condition. Our military

friends quitted us after our arrival in Sydney, our final destination.

My father had visited the port when an officer in the East India

Company's service as far back as the year 1820, had been struck with the

land's capabilities, and augured well of its future. He resolved to

settle therein in the aftertime, did events shape themselves that way.

By that voyage our destinies as a family were decided.

The Paris of the South was then a seaside town, numbering not more than

thirty or forty thousand inhabitants. Described in station parlance, it

was well grassed and lightly stocked. As a matter of fact there was a

good deal of grass in the streets, and between Macquarie Place, which

was our first location, and the Domain, the little Alderney cow, which

had accompanied us on the ship, was able to pick up a good living. She

and other vagrom milch kine often eluded the vigilance of the sentry, at

the entrance to the Domain, where they revelled in the thick

couch-grass; to be turned out at the point of the bayonet when

discovered. Much of the city is changed; but much remains unchanged. Our

first abode was a moderate-sized house in Macquarie Place. It possessed

a second story and a garden, standing next to a tall, narrow building,

occupied by Mr. Harrington, an eminent civil servant of the

pre-parliamentary régime, later on Griffiths Fanning's office. Messrs.

Montefiore, Breillat, and Co. possessed the corner house with its walled

enclosure, taking in the angle of Bent Street, with a frontage also to

O'Connell Street. The wall, the house, and the store _still_ stand,

unaltered in half a century. Mr. Dalgety, then himself a junior clerk,

might be seen walking to and fro from the wharves, inspecting cargo,

note-book in hand. Think of that, young gentlemen in like positions, and

ponder upon the mercantile monarchies which have been (and may still be)

reached by perseverance, financial talent, and prudent ambition!

Chief-Justice and Mrs. Forbes, with their family, inhabited a large

stone house on the opposite side of the street, also surrounded by a

wall. It now forms a portion of the Lands Office buildings. Archdeacon

Cowper lived on the other side, now New Pitt Street, a grass plot with

two large cedars being in front of the house.

Sydney must have been then not unlike in appearance to one of the larger

country towns, Bathurst or Goulburn, save and excepting always its

possession of the unrivalled harbour and that fragment of Eden the

Botanic Garden. There we children walked in the mornings of our first

summer in Sydney. The grateful freshness of the air, the beauty of the

overhanging trees, the vision of blue water and white-winged skiffs seen

through flower thickets, still remains among my childhood's fairest

memories.

At the back of our garden rose a stone wall, which supported the higher

level of the allotments fronting O'Connell Street. In a balconied

mansion opposite lived Mr. Raymond, the Postmaster-General, with his

numerous family of sons and daughters.

How few survive of that merry band of youths and maidens, whom I

remember so well! After our debarkation no time was lost in sending me

to school. A lady who lived conveniently close, in O'Connell Street,

first directed the pothooks and hangers, which, further developed, have

since covered so many a printed page. Mr. Walter Lamb and the late

Colonel Peel Raymond were among my schoolfellows. At the ripe age of

seven, being according to the maternal partiality too far advanced for a

dame school, I was promoted to Mr. Cape's Sydney Academy, in King

Street, opposite to St. James's Church. Seventy boys more or less were

there, not a few of whom have since distinguished themselves 'in arms,

in arts, in song.' William Forster, Walter Lamb, Whistler Smith, and

Allan Macpherson were among my older comrades. I well remember on the

day of my arrival how Forster, actuated by the hatred of injustice which

characterised his after-life, fought a sanguinary battle with another

oldster who had been oppressing a smaller boy. Sir James Martin was

there then, or came soon afterwards. At any rate he was one of the

scholars when Mr. Cape, then newly appointed Headmaster of the Sydney

College, moved over and took possession of that institution upon its

opening day. The Nortons, James and John, were among the pupils, with

many others whom I could perhaps recall, but whose names are at present

fading in the mists of the past. The Dowlings, Mitchells, David Forbes,

Sir John Robertson, Mr. Dalley, with many another, were among the pupils

of that most conscientious and earnest teacher. They will always

acknowledge, doubtless, their indebtedness to him for a sound classical

training, the groundwork of their higher education.

The late Mr. James Laidley was one of the smaller boys at that time. Our

fathers had been friends in other lands. I saw Commissary-General

Laidley's funeral—a military one—and Dick Webb, the family coachman,

leading the dead officer's favourite chestnut mare in the procession.

On the day of my introduction came also a new boy, about the same age.

His name was Hugh Ranclaud. We were placed in a class in order to test

our reading, and, as the last comers, at the bottom of the class. The

lesson commenced; the others went through their allotted portion

haltingly, after the fashion of the small boy of the period. When it

came to Ranclaud's turn, he commenced in a clear, distinct,

properly-punctuated manner, much as if he had been in the habit of

performing at penny readings, or acting as curate on occasion. I see (as

if it were yesterday) Mr. Cape, who paused to listen, take him by the

arm and march him to the head of the class. I was promoted, too, and we

soon quitted that class for a higher place in the Division, from that

day to be close friends and confidants in literary matters. Eager,

voracious readers we both were. He was a poet as well. We used to walk

about arm in arm and recite bits out of Walter Scott and Byron. Until we

left school and settled in different colonies our friendship remained

unbroken.

The first thing I remember after the ceremony of installation was the

adjournment to the new cricket-ground granted for our use in that part

of Hyde Park then known as the Racecourse, which was opposite to the

College, now the Grammar School. Percy and Hamilton Stephen were at the

wickets. They, with their cousins James and Frank, Alfred, Consett, and

Matthew Henry were among the schoolboys of that period; Prosper and

André de Mestre, with, later on, Etty (Etienne), then a little chap,

like myself.

We of the old school were much gratified at the superior advantages we

now enjoyed in the way of playgrounds. The free use of Hyde Park, then

merely fenced and not planted, was granted to us. Below the school

building was a large area, divided by a wall from the present labyrinth

of terraces built on the Riley Estate, then a furze-covered paddock of

pathless wilds, in which we were free to wander.

A chain-gang was at that time employed, under armed warders, in

levelling the line of road which leads towards Waverley. One of the

prisoners tried to escape and was shot by a warder. We boys went over.

There he lay dead in his prison garb, with a red stain across his chest,

'well out of the scrape of being alive and poor,'—only paupers were

unknown then, and prisoners, of course, plentiful.

We were near enough to the Domain for the boarders to walk to 'The

Fig-tree,' that well-known spot in Wooloomooloo Bay, where so many

generations of Sydney boys have learned to swim. The old tree (a wild

one) was there long years after, and from the stone wharf, with steps

considerately made in Governor Macquarie's time, how many a 'header' has

been taken, how many a trembling youngster pitched in by ruthless

schoolmates! There was no danger, of course, and among rough-and-ready

methods of teaching a useful accomplishment, it is perhaps one of the

best. Mr. Cape was a good swimmer, and on the mornings when he

accompanied us, these little diversions were not indulged in.

My recollections of him as a headmaster, and, indeed, in every other

capacity, is uniformly favourable. He was a strict, occasionally severe,

but invariably just ruler. Discriminating too, always ready to assist

real workers such as Forster, Martin, George Rowley, and other

exceptional performers. But for us of the rank and file, whose

scholastic ambition lagged consistently behind our powers, he had

neither mercy nor toleration. A thorough disciplinarian, prompt,

punctual, unsparing, we knew what we had to expect. The consequence was

that a standard of acquirement was reached at a comparatively early age

by his scholars which with a less resolute instructor would never have

been gained.

The constitution of the school was professedly in accordance with the

Church of England denomination, but it was wisely ordered by the

founders that no religious disability should exist. The fees were low,

particularly for the day scholars. All ranks and denominations were

equally represented, equally welcome. Mr. Cape himself, though

inflexibly orthodox as an Anglican Churchman, was liberal and

comprehensive in his views. The school was commenced (I think)—certainly

ended—with a prayer from the Liturgy. The boys who belonged to Jewish,

Roman Catholic, or Nonconformist denominations were permitted at

pleasure to absent themselves from this observance. Very few troubled

themselves to do so. Among the boys themselves I never remember the

religious question being raised. We remained united and peaceable as a

family (resorting, of course, to the British ordeal of single combat on

occasions), but all took rank in the school chiefly in accordance with

their prowess in the classes or the cricket-field. We had no other

standards of merit.

Talking of cricket, the 'stars' of my day were Mr. William Roberts,

senior, who with his brothers Dan and Jack were my contemporaries, and

Mr. William Still. Roberts was a distinguished bat, renowned for the

finer strokes and artistic 'cuts.' Still was a deadly bowler, a

first-class field, and unerring catch.

In those days the old barrack-square was in existence, taking up many

thousand feet of priceless frontage, at present value, in George Street.

The military reviews and evolutions performed therein afforded unfailing

interest to the schoolboy and nursery-maid of the period. Colonel

Despard was the military commander of the day. His carriage and pair of

chestnut horses, George and Charger, both nearly thoroughbreds, passed

into our hands at the sale of his effects previous to his departure from

the colony for New Zealand.

Racing matters, which have received of late years such astonishing

development, were then in an infantile condition, it may be believed.

Hyde Park was probably the first race-course. The next arena (literally)

was the Old Sandy Course near Botany. To this unimproved tract I

remember trudging with school comrades in 1836, when we witnessed a

closely contested race, in heats too, between Traveller and Chester, the

former winning. Frank Stephen rode a mule that day, who kicked all the

way there and back. Lady Godiva and Lady Cordelia were the heroines of

that meeting. Charles Smith and Charles Roberts were the principal

supporters of the turf. This was near the proclamation of Her Gracious

Majesty's accession to the throne at the age of eighteen years. Hugh

Ranclaud and I attended the ceremony, and heard the proclamation read

among the oak trees not far from the Lands Office.

The late Colonel Gibbes was a friend of the family. Edmund Gibbes was a

schoolfellow, and many holiday visits were paid to Point Piper, their

lovely residence. It was my ideal of perfection as a haven of bliss for

boys, far removed from lessons and other drawbacks of youth. Many a

happy day I spent there, though nearly coming to premature grief in the

fair (and false) harbour. A large, well-ordered mansion, sufficiently

removed from town to have country privileges, Point Piper contained all

the requirements for youthful enjoyment. The kindest hostess, the nicest

girls, a picturesque old-fashioned garden with fruit and flowers in

profusion, fishing, bathing, boating to any extent, books, and

music,—all the refinements and elegancies then procurable in Australia.

As to the course of everyday life, it did not differ noticeably, as I

can aver from after-experience, from that of country-house life in

England. The stables were well ordered, grooms and coachman being

assigned servants of course. Perhaps a stricter supervision was

necessary for some reasons. At a stated hour one of the sons of the

house was expected to walk down to the stables, which were half a mile

distant, to perform the regulation inspection, to see the evening corn

given, the horses bedded down for the night.

We boys (Edmund, his younger brother Gussie, and myself) used to fish

and bathe nearly all day long, continuing indeed the latter recreation

in the summer afternoons till the sun scorched our backs. Then, after a

joyous evening, how sweet to fall asleep, lulled by the surges, which

ever, even in calmest weather, made mournful music on rock or

silver-sanded shore the long night through!

About this time a certain adventure befell our party, which might have

ended tragically. One fine morning Gussie and I, with a kinsman about

the same age, went fishing in the bay. Our 'kellick' was down, and the

sport had been good. The provisional anchor was lifted at length, as the

wind, having shifted, began to blow off the land. We had delayed too

long, and found it hard work to make headway against it. Pulling with

unusual determination, one oar snapped. The blade floated away. The gale

was rising fast. Moving broadside on meant being blown out to sea. An

interval of uncertainty ensued. Gussie, who was a little fellow, began

to cry as we rapidly receded from the Point and the waves rose higher.

I took the command—my first salt-water commission. It was no use letting

matters (and the boat) drift. To this day I wonder at the inventiveness

which the emergency developed. Taking off Gussie's pinafore, a brown

holland garment of sufficient length, I caused him to stand up and hold

it like a sail. Wallace, the other boy, was to act as look-out man. I

took the tiller and steered towards Shark Island, which lay between

Point Piper and the Heads. Our spread of canvas was just sufficient to

keep steerage way on. The wind was right aft. And in a comparatively

short time we jammed the boat's bow between two rocks, where there was

just beach enough to haul her up safe on our desert island.

We knew, of course, that they would see us from the house, and judging

that we were cast away, send for us. Soon we discerned a boat coming to

our rescue manned by the groom and the gardener—both fair oarsmen. The

wind was a good capful by this time, and it took two hours' hard pulling

to land us at the Point Piper jetty. 'Oh, you naughty boys!' I can hear

the mild châtelaine saying in simulated wrath as we marched up,

extremely glad to be so well out of it; and as they were very glad too,

no serious consequences tending to moral improvement ensued.

At the Sydney College half-yearly examination Archbishop Polding was

always among the examiners—a gentle, if dignified, old man, whom all of

us revered. Our own Bishop and clergy attended on these occasions, but I

have a more distinct impression of the Prelate first mentioned than of

any other clergyman of the day. St. Mary's Cathedral was building

then—it is building now—a monument of the persistent progress of the

Church of Rome. What she begins she always ends, rarely relinquishing an

undertaking or a stronghold. My reason for mentioning the religious

aspect of the question is that, save for the morning and evening prayer

and Mr. Cape's regular church-going, our school, though strictly

denominational in theory, was virtually national and secular; chiefly,

as I said before, because we of the different sects and persuasions

agreed to respect each other's religious opinions and beliefs.

Whether this practical Christianity made us the worse churchmen in

after-life I leave others to judge. When my father deserted salt water

for the land permanently, he did not fix on one of the charming nooks

embosomed in sea-woods which lay so temptingly between Hyde Park and the

South Head road. Like most sailors, he had had enough of 'the sad sea

waves,' whether in play or in earnest, and was relieved to be out of

sound of them. Glenrock was, I believe, offered to him at a temptingly

low rate, but he preferred to buy a tract of wild land at Newtown, as

the suburban hamlet was then called, there to build and improve.

Beginning in good earnest, the walls of a large two-storeyed house soon

arose—something between a bungalow and a section of a terrace. One

Indian feature of the place was a verandah fully a hundred feet in

length, and twelve feet in breadth, running across the façade and

turning the ends of the house. This was flagged with the cream-coloured

Sydney sandstone. Well do I remember its refreshing coolness of touch

and appearance in our first summer. The house being built, the garden

planted, and the whole purchase substantially fenced, the property was

christened 'Enmore,' the name borne by the suburb into which it has

grown to this day. East Saxon originally, it may be quoted as an

instance of the evolution even of names. From one of the eastern

counties of England it emigrated to Barbadoes, where it served to

distinguish the plantation of an intimate friend of my father, the late

James Cavan, a wealthy mercantile celebrity of Barbadoes in the good old

days—the days of slavery and splendour, of princely magnificence and

gorgeous profits, whereof the author of _Tom Cringle's Log_ has left

such picturesque descriptions. Hence to an Australian suburb, and going

further afield, still following the course of colonisation, the homely

name has travelled into the far interior. There are now the Enmore

Blocks, an Enmore sheep station, and possibly in the future there will

arise an Enmore inland town, with railway terminus, town hall, and

municipality complete.

In the years between 1836 and 1840, when we lived at Enmore, we had,

like all other householders of the day, assigned servants. The only

exceptions at that time were our confidential nurse, and Copeland the

coachman, an ex-50th man. Most fortunate was it for us young people that

such a woman had attached herself to the family; of exceptional energy

and intelligence, deeply religious, with an earnest and unswerving

faith—'a slave of the ought,' like Miss Feely. As she abode with us from

1828 to 1858, it may be imagined what an influence for good she exerted

upon us children when almost wholly under her control.

As for the poor convicts, they were really much the same as other

people. Some were good, none of them particularly bad. Their master,

though with a natural leaning to quarterdeck discipline, was not severe.

When they got 'into trouble,' as they expressed it, it was through their

own irregularities. A man would apply for a 'pass' (a permit in

writing), granting leave to go to town and return by, say, eight o'clock

P.M.; instead of which (like the ingrate who stole geese off a common)

he would get drunk, be locked up by the police, and be brought up before

Captain Wilson or other Police Magistrate of the day, charged with

intoxication and being out after hours, whereupon he received

twenty-five or fifty lashes, and was carefully returned to our service.

The first intimation we received was the sight of Jack or Bill, as the

case might be, coming up the carriage-drive in charge of a constable;

his blood-stained shirt tied over his shoulders by the sleeves, instead

of being worn as usual.

The flogging wasn't child's play, as may be believed. I have seen the

weals and torn flesh; but the men did not seem to care so much about it,

nor did it tend to brutalise them, as asserted. They admitted that it

was their own fault, for running against that stone wall, the law. We

had nothing to do with it, but indeed suffered loss of work thereby. In

a day or two they were all right and cheerful again, well behaved of

course, until that fatal 'next time.' Whether the men were of tougher

fibre in those days, I can't say; but fancy a latter-day larrikin

getting fifty or a hundred lashes, as these men did occasionally,

without wincing, too! Compared to the modern product, the 'larrikin,'

with his higher wages, better food, and more of the comforts of life

than are good for him, they were angels of light.

The groom was a prisoner; so also the gardener, the butler, the

housemaid, the laundress, the cook. The women were, no doubt, more

difficult to manage. If they got to the sideboard when there was a

bottle of wine open, trouble ensued. Hard working and well behaved

generally, none of them could withstand the temptation of drink. This

may have occurred more than once, but the ultimatum of which they stood

in dread was, after repeated misbehaviour, to be sent to the Factory at

Parramatta—the Bridewell of the colony. Their hair was cut short in that

house of correction. They were supposed to work at hard and monotonous

tasks. The work the unfortunates did not mind so much, but the

short-cropped hair—all ignorant of the turn fashion was to take in

after-years—they detested unutterably.

Two of these _engagés_ (as French colonial officials called them) played

us a pretty trick, for which, though it caused temporary inconvenience

to the household, I have always felt inclined to pardon them.

The butler was a smartish young Dublin man, not more than a year out. He

behaved well—was steady and willing. The laundress—Catherine Maloney,

let us say—a quiet, hard-working young woman, was a valuable servant,

worth about fifteen shillings a week, as wages go now. Fancy the

privilege of keeping a capable servant, say, for four or five years

certain! 'Please to suit yourself, ma'am,' and the later domestic

tyrannies were then unknown. However, Patrick and Kate nourished deep

designs—made it up to get married; wicked, ungrateful creatures! One

fine morning they were missing, and, what was really exceptional in

those man-hunting days, were never discovered—never indeed found from

that day to this! 'These lovers fled away into the storm.' It would be

in 1839, just about the 'breaking out' of Port Phillip. They probably

got there undetected. Who knows? One wonders what became of them. Did

Patrick grow rich, prosperous—even politically eminent? It was on the

cards. They had my good wishes, in any case.

When we migrated to Port Phillip in 1840, a special permit was obtained

from the Governor in Council to take down our servants—eight men and two

women. The men went overland with the stock, and of course remained till

their tickets-of-leave were due. But the women, our fellow-passengers by

sea, married soon after they got to Melbourne. It was a 'rush,' in the

latter-day goldfields' idiom, and women were at a premium. We might have

refused our royal permission to this, but were not hard-hearted enough

to do so. We were thus left desolate and servantless, a condition in

life much less common in those days than it is now, I grieve to say,

speaking as a householder. The men on the whole behaved well. George

Stevenson, a clever mechanic and gardener from the north of Ireland, was

drowned while crossing the Yarra at Heidelberg by night—a shanty being

the fatal temptation. The groom died in the Benevolent Asylum at

Melbourne, after many a year of faithful service to us and others. All

our men but one got their tickets-of-leave, and drifted away out of ken.

But while on the question, I may here record my opinion, that these men

and their class generally did an immense deal of indispensable work in

the earlier decades of the colony. They were, on the whole, when fairly

treated, well behaved. They rarely shirked their work, were often

touchingly attached to the families wherein they had done their enforced

servitude, and after their virtual freedom was gained, mostly led

industrious and reputable lives.

AFTER LONG YEARS

'This is the place; stand still, my steed, let me review the scene!'

Quite correct, this is the place, though so changed that I hardly

recognise the homestead which I built when I 'took up the Run' still

known as 'Squattlesea Mere,' so many a year ago. Can it be possible that

half a century should have passed—fleeted by like a dream—as a tale that

is told—and that I should again stand here, looking at the work of my

hands in that old time, whereof the memory is so fresh? The huts, the

stock-yards, the cottage wherein we dwelt in peaceful contentment,

nearly all are there, though much decayed and showing manifest signs of

old Time—_edax rerum_—with his slow but sure attrition. The fruit trees

in the garden, planted with my own hands, are of great age and size, and

still bearing abundantly in a soil and climate so favourable to their

growth. I find it almost impossible to realise that in June 1844, being

then a stripling of eighteen, I should have established this 'lodge in

the wilderness,' now developed into a fair-sized freehold, besides

supporting a number of families in comfort and respectability on the

selected portions.

Well do I remember the dark night when I reached this very spot, on a

tired horse, having ridden from Grasmere on the Merrai that day, nearly

fifty miles, without food for man or beast. The black marauders of the

period held revel on a cape of the lava-bestrewn land which jutted out

upon the marsh, near the Native Dog's Well. I had stumbled on to their

camp, not seeing it until I was amid their dimly-burning fires.

Relations were strained between us, and as they were then engaged in

banqueting upon one of my milch cows (name Matilda), there is no saying

what might have happened to the chronicler if my colt, a great-grandson

of Skeleton (own brother to Drone), had not responded to the spur.

The overseer and I, arming ourselves, rode to the scene of the

entertainment next morning, which presented an appearance much

resembling the locality in Robinson Crusoe's island after the savages

had finished their repast. Portions of the murdered milker were visible,

also her orphaned calf, lowing in lament after his kind. But our sable

neighbours had vanished.

* * * * *

I drove over the identical spot last week. How different its aspect!

Drained and fenced—the black soil of the fen showing by depth and colour

what crops it is destined to grow—a wire fence, a dog-leg ditto, all

sorts of queer enclosures. Only the volcanic trap ridges remain

unchanged, and the 'Blue Alsatian Mountains,' as typified by Mount Eeles

and Mount Napier, which seem to 'watch and wait alway.'

Yes. The landscape has an altered appearance. What we used to call 'the

smooth side' of the Eumeralla—as differentiated from the 'stones' of

Mount Eeles, then, as now, rough enough in all conscience—has since our

day been almost wholly denuded of timber. The handsome, umbrageous,

blackwood trees (_Acacia melanoxylon_), which marked and shaded the

'islands' in the great mere, are dead and gone.

The marsh lands, then divided into islands, flats, and reed-beds, now

present one apparently dead level, less picturesque, but more

profitable, as fields of oats and barley are now to be seen where the

'wild drake quacked and the bittern boomed.'

Yon broad arterial drain is responsible for this transformation. More

complete reticulation will in time turn the ancient fen, I doubt not,

into one of the most productive agricultural areas in the Port Fairy

district.

Still, with the increase of population and the onward march of

civilisation, one natural enemy of the grazier comes forward as another

is displaced. The dingo and kangaroo, with our poor relations, the

aborigines, have mostly disappeared. But the rabbit in countless

multitudes has arrived and come to stay; while the hero of our nursery

tales and I wot not of what mediæval legends, Master Reynard, the fox,

has found the climate suit his constitution. He raids the good-wife's

turkeys, not wholly neglecting lambs, much as he might have done in the

midland counties of England. Charles Kingsley's father (he tells us)

took him into the garden one night to hear a fox bark, believing that

the breed would soon be extinct in England; but he has held his own so

far in the old country, and as I was told of a vixen with six cubs

discovered in a log at Snaky Creek last week, I doubt whether we should

not be able to re-export him, like the hares and rabbits, if a demand

sprang up for the Australian Reynard.

Squattlesea Mere was certainly a good place for game. Snipe were

plentiful, and might be shot, so to speak, from the parlour window. Wild

ducks, geese, turkeys, quail, and the beautiful bronze-wing pigeon also.

The kangaroo was then in the land, and helped our larder (notably with

his tail, which made excellent soup), and an occasional dish of steak or

hashed wallaby. The flesh tasted something between lean beef and veal,

not at all a bad substitute for salt junk, when well cooked. A couple of

hundred rabbits at least must have crossed the road, running eastward,

in two or three miles, as we drove along this morning.

How such a sight would have astonished us formerly! Hares, too, from

time to time. Our kangaroo dogs were then nearly as fast as the pure

greyhounds now so plentiful on every estate, and what good sport we

should have had! Driving by coach between the towns of Hamilton and

Macarthur, I observed with satisfaction that the old stations survived

in the form of respectable, though not overgrown, freehold estates. And

although the owners are no longer the same, they still bear their old

names, and are thus distinguished from the smaller-sized arable and

grazing farms which have occupied the remaining areas.

'Monivae' (the first in order along the Macarthur road), from which I

have more than once seen Acheson Ffrench driving his four-in-hand, now

boasts a mansion and excellent fencing. The old cottage, however, yet

stands, surrounded by the station buildings, where the merry girls and

boys grew up, and where we used to be glad to be asked to stop for a

night in the 'dear dead days beyond recall.' Werongurt too, where John

Cox held sway, where the first orchard was planted, where the choice

Herefords roamed at will, where The Caliph and The Don were located, may

still be recognised. There the rye-grass and clover—in after-years

destined to overspread the land—were introduced; and more wonderful

still, where the first swing-gate for drafting cattle was put up in 1842

or 1843 (_pace_ Mr. Lockhart Morton). At the thriving township of

Macarthur I had the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with my old

friend Mr. Joe Twist, formerly the crack stock-rider of the Port Fairy

district.

At a little distance on the old Port Fairy road to Hamilton, now left

untouched by the present railway, is Lyne, once the station of Messrs.

Lang and Elms. At Macarthur, where I again beheld the deep, unruffled

waters of the Eumeralla, still exists a compact freehold, running back

to Mount Eeles and the volcanic country, which is now, I am afraid, an

extensive rabbit preserve. This is known as Eumeralla West, at present

in the occupation of Mr. John Learmonth, in whose hands it presents a

thriving well-managed appearance. On the other side of the river is

Eumeralla East, cut off from the original run by an authoritative

decision of Mr. Commissioner Fyans, and now in the possession of Mr.

Staughton.

Dunmore alone—once a show station for the quality of its sheep, cattle,

and horses—has suffered a melancholy change. The last of the three

partners, Messrs. Campbell, Macknight, and Irvine, strong in youthful

hope and sanguine trust in fortune when I first knew the district, died

but a few months since.

'Tis a saddening task to run over the list of the companions of one's

youth and to note how the summons of death, the warning, the unsparing

hand of time, has thinned or menaced their ranks.

Poor dear old Dunmore! How many a jolly muster have we shared in there!

How many a loving 'look through' the stud—how many a race had we talked

over with the first owners! It was taken up only a year or two before

Squattlesea Mere. What dances and picnics, rides and drives, had we

there joined in! What musters of well-bred bullocks, fat and

high-priced, had we escorted from Paradise Camp when 'Long John Mooney'

reigned as king of the cattle-dealers! And now, to think of all this

greatness departed! The pity of it! No herd of cattle, no stud—Traveller

and Clifton, The Premier, Tramp, Triton and Trackdeer, St. George, The

Margravine, Lord of Clyde, Mormon—all dead and gone! Equine shadows and

phantoms of the 'brave days of old.'

Hospitably received by the present proprietor of Squattlesea Mere, with

whom I had much in common, as we had shared the changing seasons and

varying profits of the Riverina in the sixties, I stayed a day at the

old place. Once more I slept in the old chamber, sat at the table in the

parlour where so many a cheerful evening had been passed by the young

people who then formed our family circle, and for whom for a decade it

was so safe and healthy a shelter. Again I heard the roll of the surges,

as they beat in days of old on the shore. Again I felt as I rose at

sunrise the fresh, pure air of early morn, and wondered if I should have

the horses run into the stock-yard to pick out those wanted for the

day's work.

_Tempora mutantur_, indeed. Where are now the overseer, the groom, the

stock-rider, who, well mounted, and high-mettled as their steeds, were

wont to fare forth with me for a long day's muster of 'the lower end of

the run'? Where, indeed? Frank, the groom, most patient and

cool-couraged of rough-riders—good alike on camp or road—is dead. The

trusty overseer, who could ride all day and night at a pinch, or stride

through the Mount Eeles rocks for hours at a time, now walks with a

stick and is restricted to a buggy with a quiet horse for locomotion.

And the gay Irish stock-rider, who took so kindly to the trade, though

not to 'the manner born,' would, I fear me, distinctly decline to sit in

the saddle for ten hours of a winter's day, wet to the waist and

splashed to the eyes, as many a time and oft was our custom.

There is no doubt we are Rip Van Winkle. All the intervening life which

has passed like a dream and left so few traces, must be in the nature of

a magic slumber.

We could think so, were it not for certain changes we wot of.

The knight has been to the wars, and though shrewdly wounded, has

escaped with life, and once more beholds the walls of the old keep. It

sadly recalls the ballad—

Hawk, hound and steed roam masterless,

His serving-men grow grey,

His roofs are mossed—'tis thirty years

Since the warrior went away.

My next stage was past Orford, on the Shaw River, locally known in that

olden time 'before the gold' as the 'Crossing Place,' now a township

with inhabitants. The brothers Horan, my faithful servitors, were the

principal business men there, after the Free Selector's Act of Sir Gavan

Duffy altered the pastoral proprietary so materially.

One kept the hotel, The Horse and Jockey, built and first opened by the

Dunmore stud-groom, Baker. He trained Triton, Tramp, Trackdeer, and

other Tr-named descendants of Traveller. A good jock and finished

horseman in his day, but grown too heavy for the trade, he took to the

general stud business, and subsided into hotel-keeping. Death, the

inexorable, had claimed Mr. Michael Horan, but his widow still holds the

license, with a goodly number of young people, mostly settled in life,

to uphold the family name and fame.

Mr. Patrick Horan owns the general store which supplies the wants of the

township, but the hardships of bush life have told on the once active

and athletic frame, and though the dark blue eyes are still bright and

clear, the white beard and faded lineaments might well accompany an

older man. However, men can't live for ever, even in the cool and

temperate clime of Port Fairy.

Pat and I are still in the land of the living. For that, and the

moderate enjoyment of life, let us be duly thankful; and though neither

of us, I venture to say, will ride buck-jumpers any more, or follow the

fast-receding herd through the forest thickets, some reasonable

recreation may yet be meted out to us in our 'declining days.'

Melancholy-sounding phrase! But _triste_ or otherwise the reality has

arrived. And we must make the best of it.

IN THE DROVING DAYS

It is midwinter. The season has been severe, the rainfall heavy and

continuous, almost without parallel. The floods are out and the whole

country is generally spoken of as being 'under water.' We are on the

road from Goulburn, New South Wales, to Gippsland with a thousand head

of store cattle. We have crossed the high bare downs of the historical

district of Monaro, rich in tales of wonderful feats of stock-riding,

performed by 'the old hands,' and repeated by one generation of

stock-riders after another. The Snowy River, rushing savagely over

granite boulders, is in sight, and we hail that turbulent stream as a

midway stage in our long, tedious, and adventurous journey.

Now there is cattle-droving and cattle-droving. When loitering in early

summer-time over rich or level country the expedition is an idyll. The

cattle follow one another without pressing, feeding as they go. The

horses lounge along or are driven among the cattle, some of the men

always preferring to be on foot. The dogs are easy in their minds, the

whips are at rest. Around the camp-fires at night are heard sounds of

careless merriment; the air seems charged with exhilaration, and all is

_couleur de rose_. This sort of business is occasionally the rule for

weeks, causing the unreflecting newcomer to exclaim, 'Is this the

overlanding of which we have heard so much? Why, any fellow could do

this.'

Quite another style of travelling was that which we had experienced for

weeks and which was even now becoming intensified. When the country

travelled through is rough, thickly timbered, or mountainous; when

ceaseless rain floods the rivers and soaks the baggage; when the horses

and cattle are enfeebled and therefore prone to straggle, ordinary

difficulties are increased fourfold. Everybody is required to be at the

fullest stretch of exertion, with both head and hand, from daylight till

dark—occasionally for all night as well. Horses become lame or die;

losses occur among the cattle; the person in charge has a tendency to

become gruff, even abusive; hard work, anxiety, and perhaps short

commons are frequently inscribed on this, the reverse side of the

shield. Such is the prospect which we shrewdly suspect lies before us as

we halt the drove nearly a mile from the formidable ice-fed stream,

'rolling red from brae to brae,' and prepare for a swim over.

Our party consists of eight mounted men, exclusive of a cook or

tent-keeper, and a boy, hardy, knowing, and, it might be added, impudent

beyond his years. The leader is Mr. Harold Lodbroke, an Australian of

English descent; he has managed cattle from his youth up, and these are

not the first thousand head that he has personally conducted from one

side of the country to the other.

Mr. Elms, the second in command, is an Englishman who has plainly, by

some peculiar arrangement of circumstances, been 'born out of his native

country.' In speech, in manner, in the fifteen stone which he walks, in

the square-built, clever cob which he rides, he is as conspicuously

English as his name 'John Meadows Elms' would lead you to suppose.

Nevertheless he is a 'Campbelltown native'—(why were so many of the

early Australians born in that curious old-fashioned village in New

South Wales?)—and he knows, I feel persuaded, not only what any cow or

bullock would do under given circumstances, but what they would _think_.

James Dickson (otherwise Monaro Jim) and his mate, whom he introduced at

their hiring as 'a young man from the big Tindaree,' are stock-riders of

the ordinary run of Australian bush natives. They are given to long

hair, tight breeches, tobacco, and profane swearing; it is possible they

may be 'everything that is bad,' but bad riders—their worst enemy could

find no fault in that respect. They require to be kept well in hand, but

as they will receive no payment until the completion of the journey, it

is probable they will do their work well.

Mr. Jones (of England) is a young gentleman recently arrived, who has

joined the partly mainly for the sport and to add to his colonial

experience—of this last commodity he is likely to gain on this

expedition perhaps a little more than accords with amusement; but he is

plucky and energetic, so he will most likely come well through, with a

fair allowance of grumbling, as befits his nation.

Some preparation for the wilderness is now progressing, this being the

last outpost of civilisation. Whips are looked to, and 'crackers' are at

a premium; every horse has his shoes examined in anticipation of rocky

passes and absence of blacksmiths. 'You won't find no shoes on the Black

Mountain,' says Monaro Jim to Mr. Jones, 'and you'd look well leading

that chestnut mare fifty mile.' At this cheerful way of putting things,

Mr. Jones has a close overhaul of his charger's feet and makes at once

for the smithy. Flour and beef are laid in, spare boots, and, above all,

full supplies of tobacco are secured by the men, and lastly the

pack-saddles, provisions, tent, and general property are ferried across

the river in a rough sort of punt. It is now mid-day, dinner is ready,

and after due observance of that ceremony, every one mounts and real

work begins.

Harold Lodbroke on The Dromedary, a long brown horse, not far from

thoroughbred, plain enough, but with legs of iron and a constitution to

match, slides in among the cattle, followed by Monaro Jim and his mate.

They bring on separately, or as they would say 'cut off,' three or four

hundred of the vanguard; the rest of the party close up behind these and

they are brought briskly towards the river. There is a steep but sandy

bank, below which is the river shore. The cattle see this and hesitate;

at a shout from the leader, every whip and every voice is raised

simultaneously; the half-wild, half-fierce bullocks dash forward like a

herd of deer. Down the bank they go, dropping over and breaking down the

overhanging bank as they are forced on by the maddened animals in the

rear. Harold jumps The Dromedary over the crumbling ledge, and, making a

drop leap of three or four feet, lands right among their undecided lead.

Swinging his twelve-foot stockwhip and yelling like a Sioux Indian, he

forces half-a-dozen bullocks into the foaming water. The next moment

they are struggling with the deep, violent stream, heading straight for

the further shore and followed by all the rest. Other detachments are

brought down, which readily follow their comrades, and in little more

than an hour the whole expedition is safe on the right side of the

treacherous Snowy River. We do not purpose to camp after the usual

fashion to-night; no watching is thought necessary, we can see for some

ten miles in every direction, the cattle are not likely to re-swim that

pleasant rivulet, so the order goes forth, 'Let 'em rip.' They graze

peacefully in the gathering darkness, a fire is made of drift-wood, the

tent is pitched, and that day at least is successfully over. I have

often thought that a nearer approach to perfect contentment, and

therefore to happiness, is more frequently realised 'on the road' than

under any other circumstances of life's travel. Everything conduces to

those 'short views' which Sydney Smith recommended. The hours spent in

the saddle or at the watch-fire tend to a pleasant weariness of mind and

body. Health and spirits are at a high register, owing to a freshness of

the atmosphere and the regularity of muscular action. A certain amount

of anxiety is felt for the success of the daily enterprise, and when

that is reached in the crossing of a dangerous river, or by the

attainment of a favourable camp, the needs of our nature seem fully if

temporarily gratified. Let the morrow provide for itself. The abstract

incompleteness appears to diminish, almost to disappear in the

illimitable distance, and we smoke our meerschaum by the watch-fire, or

sink into well-earned repose, in the luxurious enjoyment of that

unbroken slumber which is born of toil and toil alone.

So, one by one, we lie down to rest with the lulling sound in our ears

of the turbulent, rock-strewn river. The _réveillé_ is sounded at 5.30;

there is no possibility of daylight for more than an hour, but breakfast

can be cooked and eaten before dawn, whereas horses cannot be profitably

searched for without some manner of daylight. The day breaks, cold and

discouraging. The rain, which had poured steadily during the latter part

of the night, causes us to congratulate ourselves that we are on the

right bank of old Snowy, now rising fast. The faintly chiming bells,

which every other horse of the twenty-three composing our 'caballada'

wore, warn us of their whereabouts. We see, as the mist lifts, long

lines of the cattle at various distances, but within easy reach of the

camp. The horses, now driven in by the boy, Sydney Ben, and the 'young

man from the Tindaree,' arrive. The cattle are soon put together. It

seems improbable that any stragglers had left the main body. Mr. Elms,

after looking through them, gives it as his deliberate opinion that he

didn't miss any of the 'walk-about mob.' We take the trail that faces

the dark woods and frowning ranges of the south, and the grand array

moves on. It would be hard to find a more bitter day, except on a

Russian steppe in a snowstorm. The unsheltered, stony downs over which

we pass seem to invite the whirlwinds of sleet which ever and anon sweep

over them. The cattle refuse to face their course from time to time,

only to be forced on as regularly in the very teeth of the blast. The

stage is comparatively long, so we toil on, drenched to the skin and

cold to the very marrow, in spite of oilskins and wraps. Still 'the day

drags on, though storms keep out the sun,' and nightfall find us at the

appointed halting-place. We do not propose to 'chance' the cattle

to-night, so a camp is made. First of all the drove is permitted to

graze peaceably to the particular spot selected. This is either a dry

knoll or the angle of a creek, fence, or whatever boundary may help to

confine the cattle at night and lessen the labour of watching. This

being accomplished, they are gradually driven up into such a compass as

gives room for comfort without undue extension of line. Fires are as

quickly as possible lighted around them. The horses are unsaddled,

hobbled, 'belled,' and turned loose. For all night purposes cattle can

be managed on foot, always excepting when they have been recently

brought from their native pastures, in which case a relay of fresh

'night horses' is always kept ready for a rush or other emergency.

Regular watches now are allotted to the different members of the party,

changing, of course, every night. On this occasion Mr. Jones, who is on

the first watch, is informed by the cook that his tea is ready, a piece

of information which he receives with the keenest gratification. He

seats himself between the tent and the camp-fire upon his rolled up

gutta-percha ground-sheet and bedding, and thinks he never enjoyed

anything so much in his life as the boiled corned beef, fresh damper,

and quart-pot tea. Monaro Jim, who is his companion on watch, is also

partaking after a deliberate and satisfying fashion, volunteering from

time to time his impressions about the weather, the road, and the state

of the cattle.

Mr. Lodbroke and the rest of the party are at this time fully engaged in

lighting fires, and 'steadying the cattle.' Their turn for luxury, tea,

and improving conversation will come at a later period.

'Terrible hard they seem to camp to-night,' quoth Jim, taking off a

wedge of beef with his clasp-knife, and looking approvingly at Mr. Elms,

who is rushing frantically after an old cow with a fire-stick in his

hand. 'One comfort is, some of it'll be out of 'em by the time we're on

watch.'

'Surely we two won't be able to keep them on the camp?' queries Mr.

Jones, alarmed at the responsibility about to devolve upon him and his

companion, and picturing cattle escaping into the darkness in all

directions.

'Dessay we'll do well enough, after a bit,' said that experienced person

reassuringly. 'Just you keep walking round 'em till you come to me. I'll

be t'other side. If two or three sneaks out, rush at 'em and keep a

fire-stick handy to throw. If a string makes for goin', holler for me.

But they ain't fond of leavin' one another, nor yet travellin' in the

dark. We'd as well go on now.'

Supper having been concluded without unnecessary hurry on his part,

Monaro Jim walks forth, filling his pipe as he goes. He explains to Mr.

Jones the position of the fires he is to guard, and departs to his post.

As they advance, the rest of the party make for the main camp-fire with

considerable alacrity, leaving Mr. Jones nervous but sternly determined.

For the first half-hour he paces rapidly from fire to fire, anxiously

peering into the darkness and driving back straggling animals. Rather to

his surprise they rush back to their companions in the herd directly

they see him or hear his voice, in preference to what he supposed to be

their obvious course, viz. to disappear in the darkness and elude

pursuit.

Finding that Jim did not think the same activity necessary, and

observing that the cattle, with few exceptions, remained stationary,

even commenced to lie down, Mr. Jones moderates his energy and lights

his pipe. He finds time to smoke in peace by the middle fire. As the

night wears on he employs himself in replenishing the fires on his side,

and occasionally carrying or dragging heavy logs of wood. Happening to

look at his watch after doing all this, he finds to his astonishment

that half his vigil is over. He feels refreshed by his late

heartily-eaten meal. He warms himself from time to time by the blazing

fires which he has piled up. Once every half-hour he walks round his

watch and ward. The night is calm and starlit. The cattle have mostly

lain down, and are apparently not disposed to stir. When another hour

has passed, Mr. Jones begins to realise a treacherous inclination for

slumber.

He has been up early, has worked hard all day, and after the third hour

of watching begins to feel as if he would give all the world for a good,

careless sleep. However, he combats the feeling, and it passes off.

Great comfort comes from the thought that when his watch is over at ten

o'clock, he can have unbroken rest till breakfast-time.

The last hour dies hard, but comes to its end in due time, and then Mr.

Jones, with secret joy, veiled under a careless manner, shakes the feet

of the pair who are to relieve him and his mate, telling them to keep

moving as the cattle are troublesome on the far side. Having seen them

drowsily dressing and finally on their way to his outside fire, Mr.

Jones betakes himself to his cork mattress, ground-sheet, and blankets,

where under five minutes he is sleeping that sleep which comes to the

just and the unjust alike if only they be sufficiently tired.

At half-past five A.M. Dan, the cook, is roaring out unfeelingly, 'All

aboard!' It seems but a few minutes to our tired hero, but on reference

to his watch the fact is fully borne out. So ends his first night's

watching.

Another day, with its difficulties to be surmounted and its dangers to

be risked. We have said farewell to the cold uplands of Monaro proper,

and are entering a mountain land, amid deep ravines and narrow gorges,

sunless glens, dense forests, and precipitous ranges. We become aware

that our droving difficulties are commencing. The subsoil, saturated

with the rains of the most severe season known for thirty years, gives

under the heavy trampling of the leading bullocks. In the vain struggle

to pass quickly many of the stronger cattle only succeed in getting

deeper and deeper into the treacherous hillsides.

It is even difficult to ride, and Mr. Jones more than once finds himself

confronted by a bullock of forbidding aspect, who, unable to advance or

retire, glares as if too happy to have the chance of 'skewering' him,

and keeps, with the defiance of despair, turning his horns instead of

his heels towards Mr. Jones' person.

However, by patience and strategy, these difficulties are disposed of

and the camp is reached, in the darkest and most gloomy of forests. No

more easy days, no more 'lazy-ally' for us. We have entered the 'big

timber,' _crede_ Monaro Jim, and it will be all hard work and 'slogging'

till we sight the parks and meadows of Gippsland. So we fare on,

gradually ascending the forest hills which are to bring us to the

celebrated pass by which we shall surmount the grand alpine chain.

Sometimes we pass through darksome forests, where the scanty vegetation

tantalises the hungry drove; now we stand upon the brow of rocky

pinnacles and see stretching before us a cloud-world of mountain peaks

and glaciers, rosy in the flush of dawn. We dine by the side of clear,

cold, alpine streams, which ripple and gurgle through long summer days,

full-fed as now. By such a brook, it chances one day, as we round a

rugged promontory, that the unwonted appearance of a settler's hut

startles us; an inhabited dwelling too, with smoke issuing from the

chimney, a real woman, and (ever so many) children. Shy and wondering,

they stand gazing at us as if we were Red Indians, while their mother

civilly offers milk and potatoes—luxuries both.

'Her husband was away,' she explained in answer to our inquiries. 'He

was nearly always out on the run, and sometimes away for weeks at a

time, mustering.'

'Was she not afraid?'

'Oh no; who would harm her? And there was not much to steal.'

'Wasn't she awfully dull?' (This from Mr. Jones.)

'Well, it was rather quiet, but there—the children, and the cows, and

the garden,—she always had something to do.'

'Her husband was handy if he made that water-wheel, eh?'

'Oh no. Yankee Jack, the digger, made that one summer he was prospecting

about here.'

'However did they manage to get the dray here?'

'Well' (rather proudly), 'it was the only dray for many a mile round;

her father gave it to them—and Joe, he packed it on the old horse, up

the range, bit by bit.'

'Did she think the mountains fine?'

'Oh yes. They were very well, but she wished they wouldn't rise just out

of their back-door like.'

We said farewell to the kindly, simple dame and her sturdy brood of

Anglo-Saxons—blue-eyed and rosy-faced as if they had come out of Kent or

Devonshire—true types of a race which claims the waste places of the

earth for a heritage and which creates thereof New Englands and Greater

Britains.

We wander slowly on with our sauntering, grazing herd, this rarely mild,

calm winter day. We look back as the cottage grows dim in the

distance—the little garden, the water-wheel, the patient wife listening

ever for the hoof-tramps of her husband's horse, fade in the darkening

eve. But we do not forget the little home picture, this floweret of

tender bloom beneath the melancholy alp.

'We'll have to look out pretty sharp to-morrow, Mr. Jones,' says Monaro

Jim. 'We've got rather bad country before us.'

'Bad country? Why, what do you call this?' hastily returns that

gentleman.

'We're only just a-comin' to it,' calmly explains the saturnine

stock-rider. 'You'll see what the sidelings is like; why, this here's a

plain to it—cattle slipping and perhaps killing theirselves, big rocks

falling fit to knock yer brains out; there ain't hardly a yard fit for a

horse to carry you. Them boots of your'n won't look very fresh to-morrow

night.' Here Jim took a soothing draw at his pipe, and glanced pityingly

at Mr. Jones' neat elastic-sided boots, apparently absorbed in pleasing

thoughts of evil which the morrow night will bring forth.

'Is there much more "sideling," as you call it?' inquired Mr. Jones,

rather overcome by this terrific description, and almost prepared to

arrive in Gippsland like a barefooted friar, if indeed he ever reached

that far and, as he is beginning to believe, fabulous country.

'Not more'n a week of the wust of it,' answered the hard-hearted Jim. 'I

wish we was well over it. I've known a-many accidents in the sidelings

in my time.'

The dawn is still grey as we ascend a green peak, at the summit of which

commences the first of the dreaded sidelings. The peculiarity of the

track here is, that while on the upper side the mountains through which

the Snowy River cleaves its rugged path rear themselves heavenwards with

a gradient of about one foot in three, on the lower side there is not an

inch of level ground between the track and the foaming waters of the

river. Where the river shore should have been is a mass of granite crags

and boulders. The trails of the many herds which have preceded us are

deeply-worn ruts, along which it is just possible for men to walk in

single file; if slippery with recent rains, or if any confusion occurs,

they are all but impassable. If the cattle, as was their constant

endeavour, manage to climb upwards, it is difficult and dangerous to

force them down. If they slip or fall downwards towards the river, it is

a forlorn hope to get them up.

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIVE-BORN TYPE

Numberless speculations, dogmatisms, and prophecies have found

utterance, in and out of Australia, touching the characteristics and

destiny of the Children of the Soil. Colonial critics sitting in

judgment upon their own and other people's offspring have chiefly felt

moved to deliver a verdict of inferiority to the sacred British type.

Not noticeably diverse has been that of the untravelled European

philosopher or social student. In nearly all cases, the mildest judgment

indicated some degree of physical or mental differentiation; another

term, for degeneration. If in the former greater height and length of

limb were conceded, to be neutralised by lack of muscle and vitality.

Worse again, if in the latter category a savage precocity and perceptive

intelligence were admitted, it was rarely if ever supported by

persistency, application, or broad mental grasp.

In the very early days of New South Wales, which I am old enough, alas!

to remember, my boyish experience familiarised me with various products,

animate and inanimate, of the Cape of Good Hope, then a handy storehouse

of necessaries, for this far and oft-forgotten continent. The mention of

'Cape' geese, 'Cape' wine, 'Cape' horses, 'Cape' gooseberries, was

unceasing. Indeed I once heard the pied peewit—a bird familiar to all

observing youth—referred to as a Cape 'magpie.' This was, of course,

natural enough. But the logical outcome of this simple nomenclature,

which puzzled me at the time, was that 'Cape,' used in that sense, was

another name for almost any article resembling but _inferior_ to a

prized original. Thus the Cape wine was what we still, perhaps

erroneously, consider that inspiriting but less delicate beverage to be;

the Cape geese were smaller and marketably less valuable than their

thick-necked solemn English cousins; the Cape gooseberries were sweet

with a mawkish sweetness, how far below the rough richness of the

English fruit! The Cape horses, not devoid of pace, were weedy and

low-caste; while the Cape pigeon was not a pigeon at all, but a gull;

and even the Cape magpie was held to be a species of lark, dressed up in

the parti-coloured plumes of his august relative, the herald of the

dawn.

Can my readers recall a period in which the adjectives 'colonial' or

'native' were not held to express very similar ideas as contrasted with

'European' or 'imported'? Along with the 'Cape' associations, I

acquired, from many sources, a fixed idea that an indefinable, climatic

process was somehow at work in Australia, preventing like from producing

like. It applied equally to men and women, horses and cattle, sheep and

goats, plants and flowers, qualities and manners. Over this anomaly,

dooming the unconscious 'currency lads and lasses' to perpetual 'Cape'

creolism, I marvelled greatly. My sympathies, meantime, were loyally

enlisted with the 'native' party.

Years rolled on. I visited other colonies and roamed over tracts of

broad Australia, far from my boyhood's home. Yet I never lost sight of

the question which so troubled my youth. I neglected no opportunity of

making observations, recording facts, or instituting comparisons

connected with this mysterious subtle Australian degeneration theory.

I even enjoyed the privilege—of which I desire to speak reverently and

gratefully—of visiting the dear old land, whence came the ancestors of

all Australians, the land of the real, veritable 'old masters,' before

any like-seeming but disappointing 'Cape' copies of the glorious

originals were thought of. I enjoyed thus certain opportunities, of

which I did not fail to make reasonable use.

I mention personal facts merely to show that, having early in life

apprehended the magnitude of the question, I set myself, not without

certain facilities for generalisation, or reasonable time devoted to the

inquiry (about fifty years—ah me!), to do battle with the error, now as

then, possessing vitality and power of propagation.

The first primary fact which appealed to my reasoning powers as

subversive of the 'Cape' or degeneration doctrine was that of the high

and increasing value of the fleece of the Australian merino sheep. This

astonishing animal, bred from individuals of selected _cabanas_ of the

highest Spanish lineage, was landed in New South Wales in the early

years of settlement, and tenderly cherished by the Macarthurs, Rileys,

Coxes, and other leading colonists, more enthusiastic for the welfare of

the land than their own aggrandisement. Kept free from 'improvement'(?)

by heterogeneous imported blood, it was actually declared by Shaw of

Victoria and other clear-visioned pastoral prophets to be equal, nay

_superior_, to the best imported sheep. It was contended for him that

the calumniated climate and pastures of Australia had in the

acclimatised merino produced a fleece delicately soft, free, lustrous;

withal, so highly adapted for the finer fabrics that nothing European

could compare with it. That from the type, now securely fixed, and

capable of reproducing itself illimitably, had been evolved the most

valuable fleece-producing animal, reared in the open air and under

natural conditions, _in the whole world_. That so far from the infusion

of the best Spanish and Gascon blood improving the Camden merino, as it

commenced to be called, marked deterioration followed. Horror of

horrors! _imported blood_ injurious—what heresy was this? Yet,

incontestably, the prices of the Havilah, Mount Hope, Larra, and

Ercildoune clips would seem to have triumphantly established Mr. Shaw's

daring proposition.

As to horses, slowly and yet surely it began to be asserted, if not

believed, that any stud-master in possession of a family of Australian

thoroughbreds, originally imported and bred uncrossed for generations

beneath the bright Australian sky, reared on the crisp Australian

pastures, had probably better pause before he introduced English blood,

_unless he knew_ it to be absolutely superior and likely to assimilate

successfully. Later on men were found to say that, given pure pedigree,

speed, and soundness on the part of sire and dam, Australian

blood-horses, though reared for generations under the _fibre-relaxing

climatic influences_ of the Great South Land, were as grandly grown, as

speedy, as sound in wind and limb, as full of vigour and vitality, as

any of the 'terribly high-bred cattle' which at Newmarket represent the

_ne plus ultra_ of equine perfection.

To this latter-day heresy, speculations as to what might have come to

the reputation of the race-courses of the land if evil hap had chanced

to the son of Cap-à-pie and Paraguay, lent considerable force.

Gradually, also, uprose a bucolic, protesting party, who denied that the

unqualified supremacy of the British-bred shorthorn was to last for all

time. Second Hubback cows and bulls of the blood of Belvidere and

Mussulman, Favourite and Comet, had landed here before the rival names

of Bates and Booth were household words, from the Hawkesbury to the

Sylvester. Careful breeders, enthusiasts for pedigree, had jealously

kept the blood pure. Size and beauty, hair, colour and handling,

constitution and flesh-amassing power were equalled or even exceeded in

their descendants. Though sorely trammelled by the 'Cape' orthodoxy,

these even at length ventured to raise their flag and proclaim a

revolutionary epic of fullest colonial brotherhood, other things being

equal. Following them came the champions of Devon and Hereford cattle.

Lastly, the Suez mail brought news that certain Bates' Duchesses, born

and bred in America, in the United States, where the 'Cape' theory as

regarding man and beast to this day doth flourish luxuriantly, were

re-exported and sold in England for dream-prices before an idolatrous

audience. 'So mote it be,' argued the bolder reasoner—'even yet in

Australia preserve we but our pure tribes inviolate!'

It irks one to recall how rigidly comprehensive was the elastic network

of the 'Cape' theory. By no means would the bulldog fight, nor die in

battle the close-trimmed cock, nor sing the bird, nor flower perfume the

breeze in Australia, as did their prototypes in 'Merrie England.' Long

years since this prejudicial indictment has been laid to rest amid the

limbo of forgotten absurdities. Man, the most highly-organised animal,

suffered of course the most injurious disparagement; he has but slowly

been able to clear himself from these damaging aspersions.

Yet, methinks, old Time, his 'whirligigs and revenges,' is even now

uplifting the personal character of the Southern Briton, no longer

forced to resent the damaging accusation. In the lower forms of the

great School of Effort our champions have arisen and done battle with

many a dux of the Old World. They have abundantly demonstrated that they

could 'make the pace' and yet exhibit the 'staying power,' which is the

great heritage of the breed. Lofty of stature and lithe of limb as they

may be—though all are not so—they have shown that they inherited the

stark sinews, the unyielding muscles, the indomitable, dogged energy of

those 'terrible beef-fed islanders' from whom we are all descended. In

the boat, on the cricket-field, at the rifle-targets, and in the saddle,

the Australian has shown that he can hold his own with his European

relatives.

It remains to be seen whether in the more æsthetic departments he has

exhibited the same power of competing on equal terms with his Northern

kinsmen. I now venture to assert, considering the limited number of

families relatively from which choice could be made, that a very large

proportion of Australian-born persons, of both sexes, have exhibited a

high degree of talent, and, in some cases, unquestioned genius in the

literary, forensic, or scientific arena. That small and distant

English-speaking population, which in a single generation produced such

men as Wentworth, Robertson, Martin, Dalley, Stephen, Forster, Halloran,

Deniehy, Kendall, and Harper—Australians by birth or rearing—may fairly

lay claim to the highest intellectual proclivities, to a moral

atmosphere favourable to mental development. It is inexpedient to

mention names in a limited community, but I may assert, without laying

myself open to that accusation of boasting for which a colonial synonym

has been adopted, that in the learned professions Australians may be

found, if not at the acknowledged pinnacle, so near as to be worthily

striving for pre-eminence. Among the fair daughters of the land we know

that there are numbered singers, painters, musicians, histrionic

artists, and writers, of an eminence which fits them worthily to compete

with European celebrities.

Pledged to observing, with deep interest, the native Australian type, so

far as it has been presented to me, I have rarely missed an opportunity

of testing not only the general characteristics of the individuals

examined,—I have even pushed my inquiries almost to the verge of

rudeness as to the nationality of parents and grandparents; from the

Parramatta River to the Clarence, from the Moyne to the Murrumbidgee,

from the Yarra to the Mataura, I have noticed 'natives' of all ranks,

ages, and sexes. The eager ethnological reader will naturally require my

conclusive opinion—a prosaic, possibly a disappointing one.

Australian-born persons, with trifling exceptions, are very like

everybody else, born of British blood, anywhere. So far from all being

run into one mould, as it pleases strangers to believe, they present as

many instances of individual divergence from the ordinary Anglo-Saxon or

Anglo-Celtic types—mentally and physically—as are to be found in Europe

or elsewhere. Then the heat, the constant eating of meat, the

locomotive, speculative habit of the land—do these not produce a

variation of type? How _can_ they be like people born in the green

Motherland? is eagerly asked. My answer is—that 'race is everything.' A

little heat more or less, a little extra wayfaring, the prevalence of

the orange and banana, of abundant food—these things do not suffice to

relax the fibre and lower the stamina of the bold sea-roving breed which

has never counted the cost of the deadliest climate or the wildest sea

where honour was to be satisfied, thirst for adventure to be slaked, or

even that lower but essential desideratum, a full purse to be secured.

If the air be hot, there sighs the ocean breeze to temper it withal. On

the great interior plateaux, the pure, dry atmosphere, which invigorates

the invalid, rears up uninjured the hardy broods of the farmer, the

stock-rider, and the shepherd. Stalwart men and wholesome, stirring

lasses do they make. The profusely-used beef and mutton diet, due to our

countless flocks and herds, though it does not tend to produce grossness

of habit, is a muscle-producing food, best fitted for those who are

compelled to travel far and fast. The ordinary bush-labourer, reared on

a farm or a station, is generally a tall, rather graceful personage. He

may be comparatively slight-looking, but if you test or measure him, you

will find that the spareness is more apparent than real. His limbs are

muscular and sinewy; his chest is broad; his shoulders well spread; he

is extremely active, and, either on foot or horseback, can hold his own

with any nationality. Wiry and athletic, he is much stronger than he

looks. He will generally do manual labour after a fashion and at a pace

that would astonish a Kent or Sussex yokel. If he have not the

abnormally broad frame of the English navvy or farm-labourer, neither

has he the bowed frame, the bent back, the shorter limbs of the European

hind. With all his faults he is much more as Nature made him, unwarped

by ceaseless compulsory labour, and more capable of the rational

enjoyment of life.

With regard to mental characteristics. It has been the fashion to assert

that a certain want of thoroughness is observable in the native

Australian youths. 'They will not fag at their books to the same extent

as a Britisher. They are superficial, light-minded, unstable, what not.'