A fellow-worker and in a sense a companion of my youth, he 'was a part

of those fresh days to me.' Many a day we rode together in the heaths

and marshes, the forests and volcanic trap-ridges which lie between the

lower Eumeralla and the sea. At many a muster have I heard Jack's cheery

shout, and enjoyed with others his drolleries at camp and drafting-yard.

Now poor Jack's whip is silent; his songs and jests are hushed for

evermore. A man with few faults and no vices. 'Born for a protest' (as

Mrs. Stowe says somewhere) 'against the excessive industrialism of the

age.' Many a dweller in the Port Fairy district must have felt sincerely

grieved at the news of poor old Jack's ending, and deemed that 'they

could have better spared a better man.'

Peter Kearney, who came to Port Fairy first with Mr. Frank Cobham from

Monaro (a good specimen of the old race of stock-riders), was one of

Jack's earlier contemporaries. With Tom Glendinning, generally known in

the district as 'Old Tom,' he was employed for a time on the Eumeralla

station. Irish by birth and 'Sydney-siders' by residence, these last had

served apprenticeship to every grade of colonial experience. The naming,

indeed, of the Eumeralla station and river was due to 'Old Tom' and his

mates, who brought from New South Wales the J.T.H. cattle (formerly the

brand of John Terry Hughes), with which the station was first 'taken up'

by Mr. Hunter. From some fancied resemblance to the Umaralla (spelt

differently, by the way), one of the streams which mingle their waters

with the Snowy River near the Bredbo, the men christened the new

watercourse after the old one. There is no special resemblance, rather

the reverse, inasmuch as the Port Fairy river, if such it be, runs

mostly underground, percolating through marshes and trap dykes, and

generally pursues an erratic course, while the Umaralla of New South

Wales is a merry, purling, snow-fed stream, which nearly attained

celebrity by drowning Mr. Tyson, who crossed it ahead of our cattle in

1870, unobtrusively travelling, as was his wont, on horseback to

Gippsland.

While on the subject of stock-riders, it is noticeable how many

different nationalities and sub-varieties there were among them. Peter

and Old Tom were, as I said before, Irishmen, both light weights,

first-rate riders, and extremely good hands at 'breaking-in cattle to

the run'—that lost or almost unnecessary art, except 'down the Cooper,

where the Western drovers go,' or thereabouts. I may stop here to state

that 'Clancy of the Overflow,' quoted by a writer who signs himself

'Banjo,' which appeared lately, was, in my opinion, the best bush-ballad

since Lindsay Gordon. It has the true ring of spur and snaffle combined

with poetic treatment—a conjunction not so easy of attainment as might

be supposed. When charged with the responsible duty of breaking-in store

cattle freshly turned out, Old Tom was ever mounted and away by

daylight. He disregarded breakfast, knowing that the early morn is the

time for getting on the tracks of wandering cattle. Carrying his

quart-pot with him, a wedge of damper and a similar segment of cold

corned-beef, after he had gone round his cattle and satisfied himself

that none of the leaders were away, then, and not till then, he lighted

a fire, made his tea, and settled to his breakfast with a good appetite

and a clear conscience. He came with me from Campbell's farm, in order

to point out Squattlesea Mere, then unoccupied, somewhere about May

1843. We stayed at Dunmore for lunch. The members of the firm were

absent, but good, kind Mrs. Teviot provided me with such a meal of

corned-beef, home-baked bread, fresh butter, short-cake and cream, that,

as I told my guide, I was provisioned for twenty-four hours if needful.

As it happened, by some mischance, we _were_ very nearly that precise

time before we had the next meal.

'Jemmy' White, Mr. John Cox's stock-rider at Werongurt, and Joe Twist,

his assistant, a native-born Tasmanian, had both followed Mr. Cox's

fortunes from Clarendon in the lovely island. 'Jemmy' was a solid,

elderly man of considerable experience, and under his management the

Werongurt Herefords were kept in admirable order. He, like his

fellow-servant Buckley, was assisted by Mr. Cox in the purchase of a run

adjoining his master's station, where, with a flock of sheep to start

with, he became independent and comparatively rich. After marrying and

settling down, he built himself a comfortable brick house at Louth, and

died the possessor of beeves and pastures, horses and sheep, in

patriarchal plenty.

Joe Twist—now, doubtless, 'old Mr. Twist,' and a substantial burgess of

Macarthur—was a boy when I first came to the district, but growing up in

the fulness of time, was promoted to be head stock-rider, _vice_ White

retired. He had by that time developed into one of the smartest hands in

a yard that ever handled drafting-stick, as well as a superb horseman in

connection with cattle-work. He would stand in a stock-yard among the

excited, angry cattle (and those that came out of the Mount Napier lava

country were playful enough) as if horns were so many reeds, even

waiting until the charging beast was almost upon him before stepping out

of the way, with the cool precision of a Spanish toreador.

With all due respect for the ancestral Briton, whom every good

Australian should reverence, I hold that the native-born artist, while

equal in staying power, far surpasses him in dexterity. What Britisher

could ever shear as many sheep—ay, and shear them well—as the 'big blow'

men of the Riverina sheds? Natives they of Goulburn, Bathurst, the

Hawkesbury, Campbelltown—all the earlier Sydney settlements. Can any

imported 'homo' even now pilot twenty bullocks, with the wool of a small

sheep-station on the iron-bark waggon, along the roads the teamster

safely travels? And similarly for 'scrub-riding,' drafting, and

camp-work, though many of the old hands, grown men before they ever

touched Australian shores, became excellent, all-round bushmen, yet the

talent, to my mind, lies with their sons and grandsons, who are as

superior when it comes to pace and general efficiency as Searle and Kemp

to the Thames watermen.

Well remembered yet is the first typical Australian stock-rider I ever

set eyes on—a schoolboy then out for a holiday. I was riding to

Darlington, our Mount Macedon Run, early in the 'forties,' with a

relative. From Howie's station a young man, detailed to show us a short

cut, rode up, furnishing to my delighted vision the romantic presentment

of a real stock-rider of the wild, such as I had longed to see. Tall,

slight, neatly dressed, with spur and stockwhip, strapped trousers and

cabbage-tree hat, 'accoutred proper,' he joined us, mounted upon a

handsome three-parts bred mare, in top condition. She shied and plunged

playfully as she came up.

'Now, Miss Bungate,' he said, with mock severity of tone, 'what are you

up to?'

This was one of the mental photographs, little heeded at the time, which

were of use in days to come. Tom or Jack, 'Howie's Joe' or 'Ebden's

Bill'—the rider's name cannot be guaranteed by me, but that bay mare I

never can forget. 'Wincing she went, as doth a wanton colt.' The summer

leaves may fall, and that dreary season, the winter of age, come on

apace, but Miss Bungate will be enshrined among the latest memories

which Time permits this brain to register and recall.

The stock-riders of the past were a class of men to whom the earlier

pastoralists were much indebted. Placed in positions of great trust and

responsibility, they were, in the main, true to their salt and loyal to

their employers. If they occasionally erred in the wild confusion of

strayed cattle and unbranded yearlings, presumably the property of the

Government (was there not a celebrity thus claiming all estrays

humorously designated 'Unbranded Kelly'?), their temptations were great.

Without their aid, living lonely lives on the remoter inland stations,

the cattle herds, often menaced or decimated by the blacks, and roaming

over vast areas of natural pasture, would never have enabled their

owners to amass fortunes and create estates. They were, as a rule,

fearless sons of the wilderness, having some of the vices but many of

the virtues which have always honourably distinguished pioneers.

MOUNT MACEDON

In the later days of 1842 I paid my first visit to Macedon, beyond which

mountain our sheep-station, Darlington, had been formed in 1838. The

overseer, on a business visit to Melbourne, whether in recognition of

personal merit, or as desiring to do the polite thing to his employer's

son, invited me to return with him. I jumped at the proposal. The

paternal permission being granted, the following day saw me mounted upon

a clever cob named Budgeree, a survivor of the overland party from

Sydney to Port Phillip in 1838, fully accoutred for my first journey

into Bushland—the land of mystery, romance, and adventure, which I have

well explored since that day—that Eldorado whence the once-eager

traveller has returned war-worn and pecuniarily on a level with the

majority of pilgrims and knights-errant.

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot on ground

That looked like Eldorado.

We reached Howie's Flat, spending the night at the solitary

stock-rider's hut near Woodend. I still recall the keenness of the

frost, which came through the open slabs and interrupted my repose.

Macedon was the first mountain I had encountered in real life, familiar

as I was with his compeers in books. I regarded his shaggy sides, his

towering summit, with wonder and admiration, as we rode along the

straggling dray-track of the period.

Walls of dark-stemmed eucalypti bounded the narrow road; shallow runlets

trickled across the rock ledges; while the breeze, strangely chill even

at mid-day, but rippled the ocean of leafage. Gloomy alike seemed the

endless forest ways, the twilight defiles, the rough declivities. At one

such place my companion remarked, 'This blinded gully is where Joe Burge

capsized the wool dray last shearing.' I thought it would be a nice

place for robbers. German stories of the _Bandit of the Black Forest_

and such-like thrilling romances, which ended in the travellers being

carried off into caverns or tied up to trees, began to come into my

head. I was glad when we sighted the open country again.

We arrived at Darlington next day, not without adventures, in that we

lost one horse. He slipped his head out of the tether rope, so we had to

double-bank old Budgeree, who proved himself a weight-carrier, equal to

the emergency.

What a change has passed over the land since then! Mr. Ebden was at

Carlsruhe; Mr. Jeffreys close by; the Messrs. Mollison at Pyalong; and

Coliban, Riddell, and Hamilton at Gisborne. Hardly any one else in the

direct line of road. What waving prairies of grass! what a land of

promise! what a veritable Australia Felix, was the greater portion of

the country we rode over!

* * * * *

A decade has almost rolled by. What motley band is this which faces

outward, from Melbourne, along the selfsame road on which old Macedon

looks grimly down, as they ramble, straggling past under his very

throne? They are gold miners, actual or presumptive.

Both worlds, all nations, every land

Had sent their conscripts forth to stand

In the gold-seeker's ranks.

Mother Hertha has for once hidden her treasures so carelessly that the

most unscientific scratching shall suffice to win them. A hundred

deeply-rutted tracks now cross or run parallel with the once sole

roadway. Wild oaths in strange tongues awaken the long-silent echoes.

All ranks and orders of men are mingled as in the old crusades.

Different they, alas, in purpose as in symbol! Watch-fires gleam on all

sides. Night and day seem alike toilsome, troubled, vulgarised by noise

and disorder, strangely incongruous with the solemn mountain shadows and

the old stern solitude.

* * * * *

Again the years have passed. The lurid, early goldfields are no more.

Order reigns where crime and lawless violence once were rife. Handsome

towns have succeeded to the crowded, squalid encampments where dwelt the

fierce toilers for gold, the harpies, the camp-followers, the victims. I

am seated in a commodious stage coach, which behind a well-bred team

bowls along at a creditable pace over a well-kept, macadamised road. We

are _en route_ to Sandhurst, now a model town, with trees overshadowing

the streets, a mayor and a corporation, gaols and hospitals, libraries

and churches. Yet, as we pass Macedon, tales are told of mysterious

disappearances of home-returning diggers, which recall my early

association of brigands with the dark woods and lonely ravines.

* * * * *

'Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.' Shade of Mr. Cape, is the

quotation correct, or are we doing dishonour to that great man's

memory,—'building better than he knew,'—and the careful heed of

quantities, inculcated by personal application to our feelings, in the

days of heedless boyhood? Times have changed with a vengeance. Again in

Melbourne! It is changed, I trow. Great, famous, rich, one of the known

and quoted cities of the earth. _We_ have helped to produce this

triumph. But at what a price? Our youth has gone in the process. When we

look at all the fine things that fill one's vision by day, by night,

within its lofty halls, amid its crowded streets, we feel like the man

in the old story, who for power and wealth sold himself to the Fiend.

'All that's very fine, my friend,' an unkind sprite whispers to us. 'You

may or may not enjoy a part of this splendour, but you are not so young

as you were. I won't mention the D—— in polite society, but the demon of

Old Age will leave his card on you before long.'

Yes, we are still extant, not wholly invalided, in this year of grace

1884. Instead of sitting on the box of Cobb's coach in Bourke Street at

6 A.M., while the punctual Yankee driver is waiting for the Post-office

clock to strike, my old friend and I, _en route_ for his well-known

hospitable home on the spurs of Macedon, enter a comfortable railway

carriage at mid-day. As we are whirled luxuriously through the grassy,

undulating downs and wide-stretching plains which surround Melbourne on

the north-east, we have ample leisure to enjoy the view. Macedon is

visible from the outset, dimly shadowed, kingly as of old, raising his

empurpled bulk athwart the summer sky. Passing the towers of

Rupertswood, the thriving towns of Gisborne and Riddell's Creek—did I

not know them in their earliest 'slab' or 'wattle-and-daub' infancy?—in

two hours of extremely easy travelling, relieved by conversation and

light literature, we see 'Macedon' on the board of the railway station,

and find ourselves at the village so named, built on the actual mountain

slope. Piles of timber of every variety, size, and shape, which can be

reft from the _Eucalyptus obliqua_ or _amygdalina_, show that the

ancient trade of the mountain foresters has not diminished. The chief

difference I suppose to be that the splitters and sawyers are no longer

compelled to lead a lonely, half-savage life, bringing the timber

laboriously to Melbourne by bullock dray, and, one may well believe,

indulging in a 'sdupendous and derrible shpree' after so rare a feat.

They now forward their lumber by rail, live like Christians, go to

church on Sundays, and read _The Argus_ daily for literary solace.

We relinquish here the aid of steam, and trust to less scientific means

of locomotion. We are in the country in the sweet, true sense of the

word—component portions of a company of wisely-judging town-dwellers,

who by their choice of this elevated habitat have secured a weekly

supply of purest mountain air, unfettered rural life, and transcendent

scenery. Various vehicles are awaiting the home-returning contingent.

Buggies and sociables, dog-carts, pony-carriages, and phaetons with

handsome, well-matched pairs—the reins of the prize equipage in the

latter division being artistically handled by a lady. Our party and

luggage are swiftly deposited, a start is made along the rather steep

incline—the lady with the brown horses giving us all the go-by after a

while. Half an hour brings us to our destination. We leave the winding,

gravelly road; turning westwards, a lodge gate admits us through the

thick-ranked screen of forest trees. Conversation has somehow flagged.

What is this? We have all in a moment quitted the outer world, with its

still, rude furnishing—tree stumps, road metal, wood piles, and bullock

teams—and entered into—shall I say it straight out?—an earthly paradise!

Prudence here nudges me. 'Come now, don't overdo it; you're really too

imaginative.' Well, there may be just the least _soupçon_ of idealism,

Prudence dear. I never was there, or if in a former state of existence,

have forgotten details; but if aught mundane can furnish a partial

presentment of Eve's favourite nook in that lost glory of our race,

surely it is the dream-garden which now opens before our wondering

vision.

On the lip of the forest hollow, taking studied advantage of every point

of natural conformation, has been created a many-acred, garden

landscape, absolutely perfect in growth, harmony, and sustained beauty

of composition. The natural advantages, it must be admitted, are great,

perhaps unequalled. 'The dark wall of the forest,' but partially

invaded, forms a highly effective background to the cultured loveliness

and delicate floral brilliancy which it overshadows. On either side, the

sheltering primeval groves make effectual barrier against the withering

north wind of summer, the winter's southern sea-blasts.

Cooler air and a lowered heat-register are consequent upon the altitude,

when on the plain below, plant and animal nature alike suffer from the

unpitying sun. Here rarely frost is seen or rude gales blow. Proudly and

secure may the dwellers on Darraweit Heights look from their mountain

home, across the unbroken stretch of plain and grassy down, relieved but

by copses, around farm-steadings and cornfields, where the harvest

sheaves are now standing in thick rows. In the dim distance are the

gleaming waters of the Bay. That cluster of far-seen lights, when the

shades of night have fallen, denotes the position of the metropolis. Can

that misty, pale-blue apparition be a mountain-range—the austere outline

of the Australian Alps? Westward lie the broad plains which stretch in

unbroken level, well-nigh to the coast, two hundred miles from

Melbourne. Around are companion heights and forest peaks. Still regal as

of yore, though his woods have been rifled and his solitudes invaded,

Macedon rears his majestic summit. The house—roomy, broad verandahed,

luxuriously comfortable, more commodious than many a pretentious

mansion—overlooks the 'pleasaunce,' to use the old Norman-French

nomenclature, here so curiously appropriate. Grounds of pleasure they,

in every sense of the word. More spacious than a garden, less extensive

than a chase, the reclaimed wild is unique in form and design as in

floral loveliness. It combines the colour-glories of the garden proper

with the freedom, the 'fine, fresh, careless rapture,' of a mountain

park.

Now for a closer description. We confess to have hung off,

involuntarily, in despair of giving even a fairly accurate sketch of

this adorable creation. What then does it comprise? Nearly all things

that man has lacked since the primal fall. A collection of longed-for

luxuries, for which the o'ertaxed heart of world-wise, world-wearied man

so often sighs in vain. An abode of rest where, from morn till dewy eve,

the eye lights on nought but 'things of beauty,' which are 'a joy for

ever'; the ear is invaded by no sound but those of Nature's harmonies.

Here, if anywhere on earth, may the soul be attuned to heavenly

thoughts; here may this fallen nature of ours be purged from all save

ennobling ideas, so truly Eden-like are the surroundings. Rare flowering

shrubs developed by soil and irrigation into forest trees; masses of

choice flowers, exhibiting in this our fiercest summer month a freshness

and purity of bloom as astonishing as exquisitely beautiful.

The natural features of the locale have doubtless been exhaustively

considered. Yet few horticultural artists would have seized so

unerringly upon the difficult compromise between Art and Nature which

has here been achieved. The winding walks through the mimic forests are

lonely and sequestered as those of an enchanted wood. The sultry heat of

the day's last lingering hour is effectually banished. The musical

trickle and splash of the tiny waterfalls is in your ear as, book in

hand, or lost in the rare luxury of an undisturbed day-dream, you

saunter on. Half-hidden recesses appear, where great fronds of foreign

ferns show strangely in the 'dim religious light'—'beautiful silence all

around, save wood bird to wood bird calling.' Out of the sad, sordid,

struggling world, far from its maddening discords and despair-tragedies,

your soul seems to recognise a purer, more sublimated mental atmosphere,

nearer in every sense to the empyrean, and freed from the lower needs of

this house of clay. A half-sigh of regret tells of fair visions fled,

even though you emerge on the lower, wider lawns gay with ribbon-borders

and yet brighter flower-fantasies in newer unfolding beauty.

For lo! in this region of glamour and the long-lost kingdom of the

sorcerer, the wandering knight has fallen upon a fresh enchantment.

Proudest of all the engineering triumphs, the prize must be accorded to

the lakelet which glitters in the lower grounds. How the calm water

sleeps beneath the heavy foliage of the farther shore! How the shadows

reflect the tracery of the willow tresses, the feathery shafts of the

bamboo clump! How freshly green the bordering turf! There is even an

island and a wooded promontory. More than all—or do my eyes deceive

me?—a shallop, light as that in which

The maiden paused as if again

She thought to catch the distant strain;

With head upraised and look intent,

And eye and ear attentive bent.

By my halidome! stands she not therein—the 'Ladye of the Lake'

herself,—fair as her prototype, though modernly arrayed, gracefully

poising her light oar. With a smile that might lure an archangel she

beckons us to embark with her on this magical mirrored water, under the

charmed shadows of the golden summer eve.

Surely all this is a dream. It cannot be but illusion. We shall wake on

the morrow, or next week at the farthest, to feel again the hot

dust-blast as we ride across the desert plain at midnight, to mark the

red moon glaring wrathfully upon the pale-hued, ghostly myall tree, that

sighs despair amid the death-stricken waste.

Even so. Yet let us dream on and be happy, if but for a little space.

Glide smoothly, O bark; shine tenderly, O stars, soft glimmering through

the o'erhanging, rustling leafage; fan this sun-bronzed cheek, O

whispering breeze, this careworn brow, till each fevered pulse be

cooled. Short is our mortal span at most. How weary distant the

ever-lengthening goal! But wherever Fate may guide, however stern the

fray, how faint soe'er our footsteps in the onward march, this fair

remembrance shall have power to refresh and reanimate our soul.

Yet another joy ere the evening, bright with songs and music, with

cheerful converse and pleasant reminiscence, comes to an end. We sit

amid the happy household group on the broad verandah-balcony, inhaling

the cool night air, and watching the wondrous effects of light and shade

produced by the late arisen moon. Masses of shrubbery stand

picturesquely gloomed against the moonlit lawns; odours of invisible

flowers pervade the still, pure atmosphere. Opaque as to their lower

bulk, the turreted tree-tops stand in clearest illumination to their

most delicate leafage against the cloudless firmament. There is no wind

or any faintest breeze to stir the tenderest leaflet. All nature is so

still that the tinkling murmur of the tiny rivulets, which thread the

lawns and flower-beds, falls distinctly on the ear. In faint but

rhythmic cadence they drip and ripple, gurgle and splash, the summer

night through. The flowers in the near foreground alone border on

individuality. Rose clusters and a few lily spikes are recognisable.

Unlike their human kalotypes, they await the dawn to recommence their

fascination. And then, in calmest contemplation, or enjoyment of

low-toned interchange of thought, ends the restful, happy day. On the

lower levels, in the country towns and around the metropolis, as we were

subsequently assured, it was felt to be sultry and oppressively heated,

while on these happy heights of Darraweit—the Simla of Victoria—the air

was at once cool and fragrant, subtly exhilarating as the magic draught

which renews the joys of youth.

WALKS ABROAD

Only a month to midsummer—A.D. 1883—when on this verge of the great

north-western plain-ocean we fall across a section of the railway to

Bourke in course of construction. Nature is here hard beset by Art. What

a mighty avenue has the contractor's army cut through the primeval

forest! The close-ranked trees taper, apparently, to nothingness until

the horizon is reached. In the twelve miles that your sight reaches,

there is not the smallest curve—no departure from the mathematically

straight line. If you could see a hundred and twenty miles, you would

find none greater than is visible now; for this avenue is something over

that length, and is said by railway men to be one of the longest 'pieces

of straight' in the world.

The still incompleted work is even now being ministered to with the

strong, skilled hands of hundreds of men. All the same, the inspecting

overseer is a necessary personage in the interests of the State. He it

is who descries 'a bit of slumming,' however minute; who arrests

progress, lest bolts be driven instead of screwed; who compels 'packing'

and other minute but important details upon which the safety of the

travelling public depends.

How efficiently is man aided by his humbler fellow-creatures, whom, for

all that, he does by no means adequately respect or pity. See those two

noble horses on their way to be hooked-on to a line of trucks! They are

grand specimens of the Australian Clydesdale—immense creatures, highly

fed, well groomed, and, it would appear, well trained.

They have no blinkers, and from the easy way in which, unled, they step

along the edge of the embankment, where there is but a foot-wide path,

lounging through the navvies without pausing or knocking against

anybody, they seem fully to comprehend the peculiarities of railway

life. They are attached by chains hooked to the axles of two of the six

trucks, weighing some fifty or sixty tons, which require to be moved.

Once in motion, of course, the draught is light, but the incline is

against them, and the dead pull required to start the great weight is no

joke. At the word they go into their collars with a will, the near

horse, a magnificent dark bay, almost on his knees, and making the earth

and metal fly at the side of the rails in his tremendous struggle to

move the load. He strains every muscle in his powerful frame gallantly,

unflinchingly, as if his life depended upon the task being performed and

all at a word; he is neither touched nor guided.

He knew his duty a dead sure thing,

And went for it then and there.

His comrade lacks apparently the same high tone of feeling, for his

efforts are stimulated by an unjustifiable expression on the part of the

driver, and a bang on the ribs with a stout wattle. The line of trucks

moves, however; then glides easily along the rails. When the end of the

'tip' is reached both horses stop, are released, walk forward a few

paces, and stand ready for the next feat of strength and handiness. This

happens to be pay-day on the line, which agreeable performance takes

place monthly. The manner of personal remuneration I observe to be this:

the paymaster and his assistant, with portentous, ruled pay-sheets, take

their seats in a trench. The executive official carries a black leather

bag, out of which he produces a number of sealed envelopes variously

endorsed.

Different sections are visited, and the men are called up one by one.

Small delay is there in handing over the indispensable cash. 91. William

Jones, £9: 12s.; 90. Thomas Robinson, £9: 4s., one day; 89. John Smith,

£8: 16s., two days. Smith acquiesces with a nod, signifying that he is

aware that the two days during which he was, let us say, indisposed

after the last pay-day have been recorded against him, and the wage

deducted. There is no question apparently as to accuracy of account. The

envelopes are stuffed into trouser-pockets, mostly without being opened.

A few only inspect their contents, and gaze for a second upon the crisp

bank-notes and handful of silver. Some of the sums thus paid are not

small—gangers and other minor officials receiving as much as twelve and

thirteen shillings a day; the ordinary pick and shovel men, eight.

Overtime is paid for extra, which swells the amount received. One

payment for fencing subcontractors exceeded eighty pounds. Sixteen

hundred pounds, all in cash, came out of the superintendent's wallet

that day.

I noticed the men for the most part to be under thirty, many of them

almost boyish in appearance. They were cleanly in person, well dressed

and neat for the work they have to do, well fed, and not uncomfortably

lodged considering the mildness of the climate. One and all they show

grand 'condition,' as is evidenced by the spread of shoulder, the

development of muscle, with the lightness of flank observable in all. As

to nationality they are pretty evenly divided; the majority are British,

but an increasing proportion of native-born Australians is observable, I

am told. With regard to pre-eminence in strength and staying power the

home-bred English navvy chiefly bears the palm, though I also hear that

the 'ringer' in the pick and shovel brigade is a Hawkesbury man, of

Cornish parents, a total abstainer, and an exemplary workman.

With such a monthly outflow of hard cash over a restricted area, it may

be imagined what a trade is driven by boarding-house keepers and owners

of small stores. The single men take their meals at these rude

restaurants, paying from 18s. to £1 per week. The married men live in

tents or roughly-constructed huts in the 'camps' nearest to their work.

I fear me that on the day following pay-day, and perhaps some others,

there is gambling and often hard drinking. The money earned by strenuous

labour and strict self-denial during the month is often dissipated in

forty-eight hours. The boarding-house keepers are popularly accused,

rightly or wrongly, of illegally selling spirits. Doubtless in many

instances they do so, to the injury of public morals and the

impoverishment of the families of those who are unable to resist the

temptation. A heavy penalty is always enforced when proof is afforded to

the satisfaction of justice; but reliable evidence of this peculiar

infraction of the law is difficult to obtain, the men generally

combining to shield the culprits and outswear the informer.

A few miles rearward is the terminus of this iron road that is

stretching so swiftly across the 'lone Chorasmian waste.' Here converge

caravans from the inmost deserts. Hence depart waggon-trains bearing

merchandise in many different directions. What a medley of all the

necessaries, luxuries, and superfluities of that unresting, insatiable

toiler, man! They lie strewed upon the platform, or heaped in huge

mounds and pyramids under the lofty goods sheds. Tea and sugar, flour

and grain, hay and corn, chaff and bran, machines of a dark and doubtful

character connected with dam-making and well-sinking; coils of wire,

cans of nails, hogsheads of spirits, casks of wine, tar, paint, oil,

clothing, books, rope, tools, windlasses, drums of winding gear,

waggons, carts, and buggies all new and redolent of paint and varnish;

also timber and woolpacks, and, as the auctioneer says, hundreds of

articles too numerous to mention. What a good customer Mr. Squatter is,

to be sure, while there is even the hope of grass, for to him are most

of these miscellaneous values consigned, and by him or through him will

they be paid for.

We are now outside of agriculture. The farmer, as such, has no

abiding-place here. That broad, dusty trail leads, among other

destinations, to the 'Never Never' country, where ploughs are not, and

the husbandman is as impossible as the dodo.

Perhaps we are a little hasty in assuming that everything we see at the

compendious depôt is pastorally requisitioned. That waggon that creaks

wailingly as it slowly approaches, with ten horses, heavy laden though

apparently empty, proclaims yet another important industry. Look into

the bottom and you will see it covered with dark red bricks, a little

different in shape from the ordinary article. On a closer view they have

a metallic tinge. They are _ingots of copper_, of which some hundreds of

tons come weekly from the three mines which send their output here. As

for pastoral products, the line of high-piled, wool-loaded waggons is

almost continuous. As they arrive they are swiftly unloaded into trucks,

and sent along a special side-line reserved for their use. Flocks of fat

sheep and droves of beeves, wildly staring and paralysed by the first

blast of the steam-whistle, arrive, weary and wayworn. At break of day

they are beguiled into trucks, and within six-and-thirty hours have

their first (and last) sight of the metropolis.

In the meantime herds of team-horses, bell-adorned, make ceaseless, not

inharmonious jangling; sunburnt, bearded teamsters, drovers, shepherds,

mingled with navvies, travellers, trim officials, tradesfolk, and the

usual horde of camp-followers, male and female, give one the idea of an

annual fair held upon the border of an ancient kingdom before

civilisation had rubbed the edges from humanity's coinage, and

obliterated so much that was characteristic in the process.

I stood on the spot an hour before daybreak on the following morn.

Hushed and voiceless was the great industrial host. Around and afar

stretched the waste, broadly open to the moonbeams, which softened the

harsh outline of forest thicket and arid plain. The stars, that

mysterious array of the greater and the lesser lights of heaven, burned

in the cloudless azure—each planet flashing and scintillating, each tiny

point of light 'a patine of pure gold.' The low croon of the wild-fowl,

as they swam and splashed in the river-reach, was the only sound that

caught the ear. Glimmering watch-fires illumined the scattered

encampment. For the moment one felt regretful that the grandeur of Night

and Silence should be invaded by the vulgar turmoil of the coming day.

One of the aids to picturesque effect, though not generally regarded as

artistic treatment, is the clearing and formation of roads through a

highland district. Such a region is occasionally reached by me, and

never traversed without admiration. The ways are surrounded by wooded

hills, some of considerable altitude, on the sides and summits of which

are high piled

rocks, confusedly hurled,

The fragments of an earlier world.

But here the road-clearing, rarely supplemented by engineering

disfigurement, produces the effect of a winding, thickly-grown avenue.

On either side stand in close order the frenelas, casuarinas, and

eucalypts of the forest primeval, with an occasional kurrajong or a

red-foliaged, drought-slain callitris, 'like to a copper beech among the

greens.' The floor of this forest-way is greenly carpeted with the

thick-growing spring verdure, a stray tiny streamlet perhaps crossing at

intervals, while leaflets of the severed saplings are bursting through

in pink or dark-red bunches. In the far distance rises a dark-blue

range, towering over the dim green ocean of forest, and marking the

contrast sharply between the land of hill and dale and the monotonous

levels of the lower country.

With all the capriciousness of Australian seasons the springtime of this

year has shown a disposition to linger—waving back with grateful showers

and dew-cooled nights and mornings the too impatient summer. Still is

the grass brightly green of hue, the flower unfaded. The plague of dust

has been stayed again and again by the welcome rainfall. There has never

been more than one day when the winds have risen to a wintry bleakness.

But who recks of so trifling a discomfort from such a cause, and will

not King Sol be avenged upon us ere Christmastide be passed—ere the

short, breezeless nights of January are ended?

What contrasts and discrepancies Dame Nature sanctions hereabouts in the

formation of her feathered families! That soaring eagle, so far above us

heavenward, in the blue empyrean, how true a monarch among birds is he!

Now he stoops, circling lower and yet lower still, with moveless

outstretched pinion and searching gaze that blenches not before the

sun's fiercest rays. The tiny blue-throated wren perches fearlessly

near, and hops with delicate feet from stone to stone amid the

sheltering ferns. That downy white-breasted diver, a ball of feathers in

the clear pool of the mountain streamlet, now with a ripple become

invisible—the devoted pelican, with sword-like beak and pouch of

portentous dimensions. Lo! there sits he with his fellows by the edge of

a shallowing anabranch, or revels with them in the evil days of drought

upon the dying fish which in hundreds are cast upon the shore. As I

tread the homeward path, the skylark springs upward from the waving

grass; trilling his simple lay, he mounts higher and yet higher, no

unworthy congener, though inferior as a songster to his British

namesake. In the adjacent leafless trees is a flight of gaunt,

dark-hued, sickle-beaked birds. Travellers and pilgrims they, relatives

of earth's oldest, most sacred bird races. Behold a company of the ibis

from far far wilds. Their presence here is ominous and boding. They are

popularly supposed to migrate coastwards only when the great lakes of

the interior begin to fail. This, however, is not an unfailing test of a

dry season, as in long-dead summers I have had occasion to note. They

are not too dignified, in despite of their quasi-sacred hierophantic

traditions, to eat grasshoppers. As these enemies alike of farmers and

squatters are now despoiling every green thing, let us hope that the

ibis contingent may have appetites proportioned to the length of their

bills and the duration of their journey. A white variety of the species

is occasionally noted, but he is rare in comparison with the darker

kind.

By the creek bank, in the early morn, the well-remembered note of the

kingfisher, so closely associated with our youth, sounds close and

clear. Yonder he sits upon the dead limb of the overhanging

tree—greenish blue, purple-breasted as of yore. Stonelike he plunges

into the deep pool, reappearing with a small fish or allied

water-dweller. More beautiful is his relative the lesser kingfisher,

metallic in sheen, with crimson breast—flashing like a feathered gem

through the river shades, or burning like a flame spot against the

mouldering log on which he sits. Of palest fawn colour, with long black

filament at the back of his head, that graceful heron, the 'nankeen

bird' of the colonist, is also of the company; the white-necked,

dark-blue crane, and that black-robed river pirate the cormorant. While

on the bird question, surely none are more delicately bright, more

exquisitely neat of plumage and flawless of tone, than the Columba

tribe. Ancient of birth are they as 'the doves from the rocks,' and

principally for their conjugal fidelity have been honoured, by the

choice of Mr. Darwin, as exemplars in working out experiments connected

with the origin of species. In western wanderings I find five varieties

of the pigeon proper. The beautiful bronze-wing, the squatter, and the

crested pigeon. Besides these, two varieties of the dove are among the

most exquisitely lovely of feathered creatures. Both are very small—one

scarcely larger than a sparrow. The 'bronze-wing' is too well known to

need description. The 'squatter pigeon' is a plainer likeness, with a

spot of white on either cheek, and, as its name implies, is unwilling to

fly up, being struck down occasionally with the whip or a short throwing

stick in the act of rising. The crested pigeon, the most graceful and

attractive of the family, is from its tameness and extreme cleanliness

of habit most suitable for the aviary. In colouring, the breast is a

delicate slate-grey tinged with faintest pink as it rises towards the

wing muscles, the front wings barred with dark, pencilled cross-lines,

the larger feathers of the extremities a burnished green, and the last

row having feathers of a vivid dark pink or crimson. A crest and

elongated pointed tail give character and piquancy to the whole

appearance. As they fly up, a whirring noise, not unlike that of the

partridge, is heard. When the male bird swells his chest and lowers his

wings in defiance or ostentation, he produces a sound not unlike that of

his long-civilised congener. They will lay and hatch in captivity, and I

observed in an aviary one of the females sitting on her eggs

complacently in a herring tin.

FROM TUMUT TO TUMBERUMBA

It was rather too far to walk this time; besides, the days are

shortening. From Tumut to Tumberumba is forty-five miles all out, and a

bad road. At breakfast-time we had no earthly idea of how or where to

get a horse. A friend in need tided over that difficulty. So, mounted

upon a clever mountain-bred hackney, we cleared the town about 9.30

A.M., and headed for the Khyber Pass (in a small way), up which the road

winds south-easterly. The time was short, but we meant going steadily,

if not fast, all through, and trusted, as we have done 'with a squeeze'

full many a time and oft before, to 'save the light.'

Buggies are comfortable vehicles when roads are good and horses fresh.

You can carry your 'things' with you, and, in cases of entertainments,

come out with more grandeur and effect than if on horseback. But give me

the saddle, 'haud juventutis immemor.' It brings back old times; and

certainly for people whose appearance is in danger of being compromised

by a tendency to increased weight, riding is the more healthful

exercise. Besides, one always feels as if adventures were possible to

cavaliers. Wheels circumscribe one too narrowly. You must start early.

You had better not drive late. Your stopping-places must be marked and

labelled as it were. You are _affiché_, for good or evil.

Now, once started on a fine morning, on a good horse, a 'lazy ally'

feeling seems to pervade the surroundings and the landscape. If you meet

wayside flowers, you may linger to gather them. You may avail yourself

of chance invitations, secure that you can 'pull up time' late or early.

As you sail away, if your horse walks well and canters easily (as does

this one), you insensibly think of 'A day's ride, a life's romance.' Is

that romance yet over? It may be. We are 'old enough to know better.'

But still we were quite sure when we started that we should meet with an

adventure or two.

First of all, we saw two young people in a buggy, driving towards the

mountain land which lay eastward in a cloud-world. There was something

in the expression of their backs as they passed us which suggested an

early stage of the Great Experiment. The bride was fair, with, of

course, a delicate complexion—that goes without saying in this part of

the world. The bridegroom was stalwart and manly looking. Presently we

were overtaken by another young lady of prepossessing appearance, with

two attendant cavaliers, well mounted and evidently belonging to the

same party. Bound for some miles along the same lonely but picturesque

road, we asked permission to join the party, and fared on amicably.

Together we breasted the 'Six-Mile Hill,' and at length emerged upon the

alpine plateau, which for many miles lies between the towns before

mentioned.

Here the scene changed—the climate, the soil, the timber, the

atmosphere. Eastward lay the darkly-brooding Titans of Kiandra,

snow-capped and dazzling, the peaks contrasting with their darksome

rugged sides, the blue and cloudless sky. Beneath our feet, beside and

around us, lay the partially-thawed snow of Saturday's fall, in

quantities which would have delighted the hearts of certain children of

our acquaintance.

Snow in the abstract, 'beautiful snow,' is a lovely nature-wonder,

concerning which many things have been sweetly sung and said. But in the

concrete, after a forty-eight hours' thaw, it is injurious to roads, in

that it causes them to be 'sloppy' and in a sense dangerous to horse and

rider. Given a red, soapy soil, somewhat stony, sticky, and irregularly

saturated, it must be a very clever steed, the ascents, descents, and

sidelings being continuous, that doesn't make a mistake or two. All the

same, the girl on the well-bred chestnut horse kept sailing away, up

hill, down hill, and along sidelings steep as the roof of a house; the

whole thing (to quote Whyte-Melville) 'done with the graceful ease of a

person who is playing upon a favourite instrument while seated in an

armchair.' We kept in sight the second detachment, coming up in time to

bid farewell as they turned off to the residence of the bride's family,

where there was to be a dance in celebration of the auspicious event. We

separated with my unspoken benison upon so promising a pair.

The wedding guests having departed, we paced on for half-a-dozen miles

until a break in the solemn forest, like a Canadian clearing, disclosed

the welcome outline of the half-way hostelry. Here were there distinct

traces of the austerity of the patriarch Winter, so mild of mien on the

lower levels. Half a foot of snow lay on the roofs of barn and stable,

while the remnant of a gigantic snow-image, reduced to the appearance of

a quartz boulder, lay in front of the house.

A bare half-hour for refection was all that could be spared here, and as

our steed ate his corn with apparently the same zest that characterised

our consumption of lunch, it was time well spent. Boot and saddle again.

'But first, good mine host, what is the exact distance? The sun is low;

the road indifferent rough; the night unfriendly for camping out.'

'Fifteen mile if you take the "cut"; eighteen by the road, every yard of

it.'

'We mistrust short "cuts,"' say we, consulting the watch, which

indicates 3.30 P.M.; 'they have lured us into difficulties ere now. But

three miles make a tempting deduction from the weary end of the journey.

We cannot miss it. Thanks; of that I am aware. Turn to the left,

opposite the second house, cross the creek, turn to the right, and

follow straight on.'

Of course. Just so. The old formula. How many a time have we cursed it

and the well-intentioned giver, by all our gods, when stumbling, hours

after, trackless, over an unknown country in darkness and despair.

Reflected that by merely following the high road we should have been

warmly housed, cheered, and fed long before. However, unusual enterprise

or the mountain air induces us to try the short cut aforesaid; only this

time, of course, we turn to the left, and immediately perceive ('facilis

descensus Averni') that the path leads into a tremendous glen, with

sides like the roof of a house. We dismount, as should all prudent

riders not after cattle, and lead down our active steed. At the foot of

the cañon is a hurrying, yellow-stained mountain stream. Dark-red

bluffs, undermined and washed to the gravel, exposed in all directions.

'Worked and abandoned' is plainly visible to the eye of the initiated

upon the greater portion of the locality; but still lingering last are

miners' cottages and a garden here and there. Children, of course. Ruddy

of hue and sturdy, they abound like the fruits of a colder clime in

these sequestered vales.

'What is the name of this—place?' say we guardedly to a blue-eyed boy,

good-humouredly nursing a fractious baby.

'Upper Tumberumba,' he returns answer proudly.

'And the road to the town?'

'Cross the creek and follow down for six mile, and there you are.'

The road on the far side of the violent little creek follows that

watercourse, and is fairly made. Bridges are the main consideration, for

there seem to be _trois cent milles_ water-races, some too deep to fall

into scathless; and 'beauty born of murmuring sound' must be plentiful,

judging from the rushing, gushing, leaping, and tumbling waters before

and around us.

This is a land of sluices, of head-races and tail-races, evidently,

where 'first water' and 'second,' dam sites, and creek claims, with all

the unintelligible phraseology of 'water diverted from its natural

course for gold-mining purposes,' were once in high fashion and

acceptance. As the short winter day darkens without warning, we trust

that the bridges are sound, more especially as we have just cantered

over one with a hole in it as big as a frying-pan.

One advantage secured by our adoption of the 'cut' is patently that of

drier footing, the which causes our steed to amble with cheerfulness and

alacrity. The night comes on apace, but there is still sufficient light

to distinguish the roadway from obstacles and pitfalls. When the

well-known sound of the water-mill breaks the stillness, light and

voices betray the proximity of a township, and Tumberumba proper is

reached.

When we quit Tumberumba in the early morn for the return journey to

Tumut, the air is charged with vapour, the mists lie heavily upon the

hills. The low grey sky, the drizzle and the damp which pervade all

nature, suggest 'The Lewis' or other Hebridean region. One can fully

realise the sort of weather chiefly prevailing when the King of Bora

uttered his pathetic farewell 'to his little Sheilah,' returning to his

desolate dwelling alone, to distract himself as best he might with the

company of the simple (but not vulgar) fishermen and a reasonable

consumption of alcohol.

This opens up to the contemplative mind the whole vast 'Grief Question,

and how people bear it.' What volumes might be written about the sorrows

of the bereaved, the forsaken men or women!—'all the dull, deep sorrow,

the constant anguish of patience.' How the slow torture drags on, varied

only by pangs of acute mental pain—the throbs, the rackings, the utterly

unendurable torment—what time the agonised spirit elects to quit its

earthly tenement and face the dread unknown, rather than longer suffer

the too dreadful present! So the soldier, captured by Indians, shoots

himself to escape the inevitable torture. Also in this connection

regarding anodynes, distractions, solaces, and medicaments, the which

can be used harmlessly by one class of patients, but in no wise by

others.

'An early start makes easy stages,' saith the seer. So it comes to pass

that soon after mid-day we find ourselves at the Bago Cabaret, after

which we incontinently dismount, fully minded to bait, after four or

five hours' battling with the stony, sticky, slippery sidelings of the

track. The good horse well deserves a feed. Also, thanks to the keenness

of the atmosphere, we experience a steady prompting towards luncheon.

The horse is led away, and in the parlour we find a fire, a welcome, and

agreeable society. We learn that the wedding dance duly took place, well

attended, and a great success—our fair informants having been there and

danced till daylight, after which they walked home a trifle of five

miles, which, with snow still on the ground, showed, in our opinion,

praiseworthy pluck and determination; a convincing proof, were any

needed, that the Anglo-Saxon race has not degenerated in this part of

the world. 'The reverse if anything,' as the irascible old gentleman in

the hunting-field made answer after a fall, when it was politely

inquired of him 'whether he was hurt.'

But pleasures are like poppies spread—

fair yet fleeting in the very constitution of them; so an hour having

quickly passed, much refreshed in sense and spirit, we tackle the

twenty-six very long miles, in our estimation, which divide us from the

fair Tumut Valley. Still lowers the day. The mists shut out the

snow-crowned peaks. The forest is saturated with moisture, which ever

and anon drops down like a shower-bath when the breeze stirs the leaves

briskly. It is not a gala day, exactly. But oh, how good for the

country!

What beneficent phenomena are the early and the latter rain! As we look

downwards we can see thousands of tiny clover leaflets, none of your

_Medicago sativa_, with its yellow flower and deadly burr, but the true,

sweet-scented English meadow plant, fragrant in spring, harmless,

fattening, and sustaining to a wonderful degree, whenever it can command

the moisture which is its fundamental necessity of growth. In days to

come, every yard of this grand primeval woodland will be matted with it

and the best English grasses, not forgetting that prime exotic the

prairie grass (_Bromus unioloides_).

We are not aware whether there has been an extensive forest reserve

proclaimed hereabouts, but in the interests of the State there should

be. These grand, pillar-like timber trees, straight as gun-barrels, a

hundred feet to the lowest branch, the growth of centuries, should not

be abandoned to the bark-stripper, the ring-barker, the indiscriminate

feller of good and bad timber alike. There is material here—gum,

messmate, mountain ash, every variety of eucalyptus—to serve for the

sawpits, the railway bridges, and sleepers of centuries to come, if

properly guarded and supervised. And it behoves the elected guardians of

the public rights to permit no private monopoly or forestalling; to see

to the matter in time. For many an unremembered year have these glorious

groves been slowly maturing. The carelessness of a comparatively short

period may permit their destruction.

The eucalypts, as a family, have been subjected to undeserved contumely

and scorn as trees which produce leaves but do not furnish shade, which

are 'withered and wild in their attire' as regards umbrageous covering.

All depends upon the locality, the altitude, the consequent rainfall.

Here the frondage is thick yet delicate in the older trees, while among

the younger growth the habit is almost as dense and drooping as that of

the _Acmena pendula_, which many of them resemble in the mass of

pink-grey leafage. I notice, too, the beautiful blackwood or hickory of

the colonists (_Acacia melanoxylon_), though not in great abundance nor

of unusual size. Nothing, for instance, like the specimens near Colac,

Western Victoria, or between Port Fairy and Portland. And scrutinising

closely the different genera, we discovered a tree which bore a curious

resemblance to a hybrid between the eucalyptus and the said blackwood.

The leaves were thick, blunt-edged, and singularly like the blackwood.

The bark was like that of the mimosa on the stem and branches, but

roughened towards the butt. The blossom—for it was just out—was

unmistakably that of the eucalyptus tribe. We had never met with the

specimen before and it puzzled us. It is locally known as the 'water

gum.' The true mimosa and the wild cherry (_Exocarpus cupressiformis_)

were common—this last of no great size; the wild hop occasionally. The

English briar was not absent—as to which we foresee, for this rich soil,

trouble in the future.

Lonely and hushed—in a sense awful—is this elevated region. The solitude

becomes oppressive as one rides mile after mile along the silent

highway, nor sees nor hears a sign of life save the note of the

infrequent wood-thrush or the cry of the soaring eagle. But lo! the

ruins of an ancient stock-yard! Easily recognised as belonging to the

hoar antiquity of a purely pastoral _régime_. The selector-farmers do

not put up such massive corner posts or cyclopean gateways. Not for them

and their slight enclosures is the rush of a hundred wild six-year-old

bullocks, with a due complement of 'ragers,' given every now and again

to carry a whole side of the yard away. This was the station stock-yard,

doubtless, what time 'Bago Jemmy' and other stock-riders of the period

acquired a colony-wide reputation for desperate riding (and equally hard

drinking) amid these break-neck gullies and hillsides. They are gone;

the wild riders, the wild cattle. Even the rails of the stock-yard have

been utilised for purposes wide of their original intention. 'Their

memorial is perished with them,' all save the huge corner and

gate-posts, which, embedded four feet in the ground, are regarded as

difficult and expensive to remove, and of no particular use, ornament,

or value when uprooted. So they remain, possibly to puzzle future

antiquarians, like the round towers of the Green Isle.

IN THE THROES OF A DROUGHT

This is my last ramble for a while through the plains and forests of the

North-West; would that it had been made under more pleasing

circumstances. 'How shall I endure to behold the destruction of my

kindred?' The quotation is apposite. All pastoralists are akin to me by

reason of old memories; and if Rain comes not in this month of March, or

even in April, their destruction, financially, seems imminent.

What a weary time it is in the 'plains dry country,' whither my

wandering steps have strayed at present. Far as eye can see, there is no

herb nor grass nor living plant amid the death-stricken waste; not even

the hard-visaged shrub—the attenuated, closely-pruned twigs of the

salsolaceous plant. Earlier in the season a large proportion of the

stock were removed, and were agisted at a high cost. The remainder were

left to live or die as the season may turn out. The station-holders have

at length become reckless, and have ceased to take trouble about the

matter.

How hard it seems! For years the energetic, sanguine pastoralist shall

invest every pound he has made, and more besides, in stud animals of

high value, in judicious improvements, from which he is reasonably

certain in a few years to receive splendid interest for the capital

invested. When his plans are matured, when the improvement of his stock

is demonstrated, will not his fame redound to the furthest limits of

Australia? Eventually he will be able to revisit or for the first time

behold Europe. All imaginable triumphs will be his. Rich, fortunate,

envied, he will be amply repaid for the toils, the sacrifices, the

privations of his earlier years.

'Then comes a frost, a killing frost.' Well, not exactly that, though

frosts of considerable severity do occur, hot as is the climate; but it

'sets in dry.' No rain comes after spring; none during summer; none in

autumn; curious to remark, none even in winter—except, of course,

insignificant or partial showers. That seems strange, does it not?

Instead of from sixteen to twenty-six inches of rain in twelve months,

there fall but six—even less perhaps. What is the consequence of all

this? The creeks, the dams, the rivers dry up; the grass perishes; what

little pasturage there may be, is eaten up by the famishing flocks.

During the summer it does not appear that the evil will be of such

magnitude. The stock look pretty well. There is water; and the diet of

dust, leaves, and sticks, with unlimited range, and no shepherds to

bother, does not seem to disagree with them. Then the autumn comes, with

shorter days; longer, colder nights. Still no rain! The sheep, the

cattle, even the wild horses, begin now to feel the cruel pinch of

famine. The weakest perish; the strong become weak; day by day numbers

of the enfeebled victims are unable to rise after the weakening

influences of the chilly night. The water-holes become muddy; defiled

and poisoned with the carcases of animals which have had barely strength

to drag themselves to the tempting water, over many a weary mile, have

drunk their fill, and then lacked power to ascend the steep bank or

extricate themselves from the clinging mud.

What a time of misery and despair is this for the luckless proprietor!

He sees before his eyes the thousands and tens of thousands of

delicately woolled sheep, in whose breeding and multiplication he has

taken so much pains,—on behalf of which he has studied treatises, and

gone into all the history of the merino family since the days of ancient

Spanish Cabanas, Infantados, Escurials, what not,—converted into a crowd

of feeble skeletons, perishing in thousands before his eyes without hope

or remedy, save in the advent of rain, which, as far as appearances go,

may come next year or the year after that.

Is it possible to imagine a condition more melancholy, more hopeless,

more calculated to drive to suicide the hapless victim of circumstances,

beyond his—beyond any man's control? It has had the effect ere now. The

torturing doubt, the hope deferred, _has_ resulted in the dread,

irrevocable step. And who can find it in his heart to condemn?

In a season like this, every one can realise the benefit of railways.

How would these inland wastes be supplied were it not for the

all-powerful steam-king? The dwellers hereabouts would scarcely have

bread to eat; the necessaries of life would be enhanced in price; forage

would be unattainable, except at prices which would resemble feeding

them upon half-crowns. Talking to a teamster the other day about the

signs of the times, I remarked that he and his comrades were compelled

to carry quantities of forage with which to support their horses, while

delivering loading.

'We'll have to carry a tank soon,' replied the tall, sun-bronzed

Australian, 'if the season holds on this way. The water-holes are

getting that low and choked up with dead stock as they're neither fit

for man or beast to drink; and we lose horses too.'

'How is that?'

'Well, the heat, or the dust, or the rubbish in the chaff kills 'em. I

can't rightly tell what it is; but these three teams lost five horses in

one day—dropped down dead on that terrible hot Sunday.'

I did not wonder. There were the upstanding, well-conditioned

Clydesdales walking along with their loads, gamely enough, but in a

perfect cloud of dust. Above them the burning sun; around, the sandy,

herbless waste. Different surroundings from those of the misty Northern

Isles, from which their ancestors, near or remote, had come! Ponderous,

heavy of hoof and hair, it seemed wonderful that they can do the work

and travel the immense distances they do, under conditions so alien to

their natural state. I inquired of their driver, himself an example of

gradual adaptation to foreign habitude, whether the medium-sized,

lighter-boned draught horses did not stand the eternal sun and drought

better than their larger brethren. He thought they did. 'Wanted less

food, and not so liable to inflammation or leg weariness.' I should be

disposed to think that the Percheron horse, of which valuable breed

several sires have lately been imported to Melbourne from Normandy,

would be suitable for the long, hot, waggon journeys of the interior—a

clean-limbed, active, spirited horse, immensely powerful for his size,

easily kept, and more likely 'to come again' after exceptional fatigue.

But I know from experience that the Australian horse in _every class_,

from the Shetland pony to the Shire, is the strongest, most active, and

most enduring animal that the world can show. And I hesitate in the

assertion that by any other horse can he be profitably superseded.

As one traverses the arid waste, from time to time a whirlwind starts up

within sight; a sand-pillar raises itself, contrasting strangely with

the clear blue ether. Darkly smoke-coloured, furiously plunging about

the base, it gradually fines off into the upper sky if you follow it

sufficiently long.

'People doubt,' said the Eastern traveller to his guide, 'what produces

those sand-pillars which so suddenly appear before us.'

'There is _no doubt_ about the matter, praise be to Allah!' quoth the

Bedouin. 'It is perfectly well known, say our holy men, that they are

(_Djinns_) evil spirits.'

Is it so? and do they come to dance exultingly amid the stricken waste,

over ruined hopes, dying herds and flocks—to mock at the vain adventurer

who deemed that he could alter natural conditions and wrest fame and

fortune from the ungenial wilds? Who may tell? They can scarcely afford

a good omen. The unimaginative boundary-rider regards them as a 'sign of

a dry season.' More likely, one would say, they are its result. In a

long-continued drought the production of dust must needs be favourable

to the action of whirlwinds.

The oppressiveness of the summer is more felt in March, perhaps, than in

any other month of the year. The hot weather has tired out the bodily

power of resistance. One yearns and pines for a change; if it comes not,

an intolerable weariness, a painful languor, renders life for all not in

robust health hard indeed to bear. Gradually relief arrives in the added

length and coolness of the nights. Rain does not come, but the

mosquitoes disappear. The dawn is almost chilly; the system is refreshed

and invigorated. With the first heavy fall of rain a decided change of

temperature takes place. In those happier sections of the continent,

where this is the first cool month, the weather is all that can be

wished. 'Ces jours cristals d'automne,' so much beloved by Madame de

Sevigné at Petits Rochets, are reproduced. The friendly fireside—emblem

of domestic happiness—awaits but the first week of April to be once more

kindled. The plough is seen again upon the fallow fields. The birds

chirp, as if with fresh hope, from the reviving woodlands. Nothing is

needed but a rainfall for the full happiness of man and his humbler

fellow-creatures. May His mercy, so often shown at sorest need, not fail

us now!

From what road-reports come across me, I gather that typhoid fever is no

infrequent visitor when the water becomes scarce, when sources are

polluted, and the carcases of the rotting stock lie strewed over larger

areas. Medical men seem to be at odds about the generation of this dire

disease. Fever germs, bacilli, bacteria, water pollution, direct

contagion,—all seem to have their advocates. It seems probable that

towards the end of a drought the very air, uncleansed by shower and

storm, becomes charged with disease germs. As to water pollutions,

sometimes the disease is at its fiercest before a heavy fall of rain, to

disappear almost magically afterwards. At other times the rain seems to

intensify the epidemic. The dry air of the interior, however hot, has

always been thought to be antagonistic to the disease. It has not proved

so of late years. Occasionally there is an outbreak of exceptional

virulence in some particular locality; but nothing has hitherto been

elicited as to the special conditions tending to produce or to aggravate

the disease.

At and around Bourke matters seem approaching a crisis. Much of the

'made' water on the back blocks has failed of late, and the stock have

been brought into the 'frontage,' there to drink their fill, doubtless,

but to be utterly deprived of food as represented by the ordinary

herbage. If rain does not come within a month, dire destruction, worse

and more extensive than in any previous drought, _must_ take place; and

yet since 1866 I have so often heard the same prediction, and it was

_never_ fulfilled. In the meantime man can do nought but hope and pray,

if faith be his in the Divine Disposer of events. In days to come, a

comprehensive system of water supply may alleviate much suffering and

prevent misfortune; but though water may be secured and stored, the

sparse herbage of the boundless plain, the red-soiled forest, cannot be

so treated. Unless the rainfall be timely in these far solitudes, no

human energy or forecast can avert disaster.

A SPRING SKETCH

In the saddle once more, and away for a week's journeying o'er the wide

Australian Waste! The springtime is again with us. The clouds have

dispensed their priceless moisture, albeit not all too generously. The

level sun-rays shine clear over leagues of bright-hued turf and

greenwood free. The pale, dawn-streaked azure was cloudless; the morning

air keenly crisp. All nature is now jubilant. The voice of Spring, faint

in tone but wildly sweet, is audible to the lover of nature. The cry of

birds, the rustling leaves in the tall trees that shade the winding

river, and the green waste of dew-besprinkled herbage, awaken thoughts

of long-dead years—of the season of youth—of the lost Aïdenn of the

heart's freshness.

That Paradise we shall regain nevermore, ah me! But we must do our

devoir as best we may in these days of the aftertime. Many a mile must

be passed before nightfall, and we are a little short of time as usual;

but our steed is fleet and free, the livelong day is before us, and the

experienced cavalier can cover a long long stretch of woodland and plain

before latest twilight without distressing the good horse either.

So we follow the winding waggon-tracks at only a moderate pace;

observing as we go, in plant-and bird-life, floweret and herb, visible

signs of development since our last acquaintance with them. The

beautiful bronze-winged pigeon flits shyly through the thickets to her

nest with its two white eggs, not unlike those of the tame congener. In

the brook-ponds or marshy shallows the blue heron, the pied ibis, and

the white spoonbill are wading or lounging, with the listless elegance

of their tribe. The gigantic 'brolgan' or 'Native Companion,' tallest of

Australian cranes, is to be seen in companies, ever and anon mirthfully

conversing or 'dancing high and disposedly' before his ranked-up

comrades.

For all manner of wild-fowl this is the 'close season.' Marauding

teamsters, and others who should know better, now and then disregard the

law; but on the whole the statute is enforced. A season of rest permits

the black duck and the wood-duck, that smallest and most elegant of

geese (for such is the _Anas boscha_ in scientific nomenclature), the

shoveller, the teal, the imposing mountain-duck, to rear their broods in

peace.

While we are environed by that darksome eucalyptus, the sombre

'iron-bark' of the colonists, the mournful balāh, and the

cypress-seeming pine, no token of the advancing spring greets us. 'A

fringe of softer green' may brighten the pine wood, but as yet the touch

of the magician's wand is unheeded. But as we speed towards the noonday,

and the great plains of the North-West spread limitless before us, the

frondage changes. The monotony of the endless champaign is broken by

clumps and belts of timber. And amid these welcome oases of leafage

might a botanist hold revel and delight his inmost soul. There is a

sprinkling of casuarina and pine, but these copses are crowded with new

and strangely-beautiful shrubs. First in pride of place comes the

wilgah, or native willow, a brightly-green umbrageous tree, with a short

upright stem and drooping salicene festoons, evenly cropped at the

precise distance that the stock can reach from the ground. There are few

lawns or meadows in Britain that would not be improved by the

transplantation of the wilgah from these untended gardens of the wild.

The mogil (native orange) is a dense-growing shrub, not wholly unlike

the prince of fruit- and flower-bearers; to complete the resemblance, it

is possessed of a fruit resembling in appearance only, faintly perhaps

in perfume, the European original. The leopard-tree, with spotted bark,

has for a comrade the beef-wood, with blood-red timber, almost bleeding

to the remorseless axe. The glaucous-foliaged myall, 'intense and

soulful-eyed,' with its swaying arms and drooping habit, looks like a

tree out of its mind. It boasts, with its more sturdy cousin, the

yarran, a strangely-powerful violet perfume. These, with thorn acacias

and delicate fringed-leaved mimosas, seem ready to burst into flower

with the next calm tropical day. An early-blooming acacia has made a

commencement; a shower of fresh, golden sprays illumines its tender

greenery.

Here our pretty, pink-legged, pink-eyed flock-pigeons, with their crests

raised, and their pointed tails elevated as they perch, rejoin us. The

grey and crimson galāh parrots are still numerous. They have surely

delegated their nursery duties. They must pair and multiply, but, like

fashionable parents, manage to enjoy the pleasures of society

notwithstanding.

The day is still young. The great flocks of merino sheep, running loose

in paddocks enclosed only by wire fences, have not arisen to commence

their daily round of nibbling. About five thousand are encamped near the

corner of an intersecting gate. Near them are the remnants of a leading

aboriginal family, in the shape of twenty or thirty 'red forester'

kangaroos, popularly called 'soldiers.' These curiously-coloured

marsupials are so bright of hue that one wonders whether they gradually

acquired the colour (_pace_ Darwin) so as to assimilate with the red

earth of the plains over which they bound. They do not trouble

themselves to go far out of my way—they simply depart from the road; and

in calmly crossing a track one of the flying does 'takes off' a yard

before she comes to it, and clearing the whole breadth without an

effort, sends herself over about twenty feet without disturbing her

balance.

Early as the season is, long trains of wool-waggons, drawn by bullocks

or horses, are slowly crossing the plains. They carry from thirty to

fifty bales each, much skill of its kind being required to secure the

high-piled loads in position. At one rude hostelry I counted not less

than twelve bullock-waggons so laden. The teams—at that moment unyoked,

and feeding in a bend of the creek, from fourteen to eighteen in

each—made up a drove of nearly two hundred head. Their bells sound like

the chimes of a dozen belfries, pealing in contest. On the waggons,

drawn up with shafts towards the railway terminus, were, say, four

hundred bales of wool, representing a value of not less than six

thousand pounds. Each bale bore in neat legend the brand of the station,

with the weight, number, and class thereon imprinted, as 'J.R., Swan

Creek—No. 1120—First combing.'

The last month enjoyed at least one sufficing fall of rain, not less

than two inches by the rain-gauge. It is hard to cause these salsiferous

wastes 'to blossom like the rose'; but a result closely analogous

invariably follows rainfall. Along the watercourses, the alluvial flats

and horseshoe 'bends' are ankle high with wild trefoil and

quick-springing grasses. The cotton-bush and salt-bush, perennial fodder

plants often most 'wild and withered' of attire even when fairly

nutritious to the flocks, put forth shoots and spikelets of a tender

appearance. All Nature, strange as her vestments may be, under a

southern sky, is full of the beauty and tenderness of the earth's

jubilee, joyous Spring.

But surely we are impinging on the domain of the giant Blunderbore,

falsely alleged to have been slain by the irreverent Jack, prototype of

the modern 'larrikin' in his turbulent denial of authority. Yea, and

yonder plain is his poultry-yard. Hither come his cochins and dark

brahmas to be fed on corn as large as bullets, with tenpenny nails by

way of tonic. They walk softly along, lowering their lofty heads to the

earth, running too, occasionally, like dame Partlet, after a

grasshopper, and diversifying their attitudes like Chanticleer. We count

them, twenty-six in all, gigantic fowls able to pick the hat from your

head. They are emus! See the quarry, and neither hound nor hunter! When,

lo! from out the further belt of timber rides forth a band of horsemen.

They are shearers, bound on a holiday excursion. The preceding day has

been wet, and the supply of sheep consequently short. All are well

mounted, and look picturesque as they burst into a sudden gallop, and

every horse does its best to overtake the (figuratively) flying troop,

now setting to for real work. The pace is too good for the majority; but

one light weight, mounted on a long-striding chestnut, that probably has

ere now carried off provincial prizes, is closing on the apteryx

contingent. Another quarter of a mile—yes—no—by George!—yes. He has

collared the leader; he crosses and recrosses the troop. Had he but a

stockwhip or lasso he could wind either round one of the long necks so

invitingly stretched. But he has proved the superior speed of his horse.

Such a trial was said in old days to have sent to the training-stable

one of Sydney's still quoted race-horses. There is no need to kill

aimlessly one of the inoffensive creatures; and he pays an unconscious

tribute to the modern doctrine of mercy by drawing off and rejoining his

comrades.

Further still our roving commission has carried us; we have halted at

the homestead of a great pastoral estate. A cattle-station in the days

when small outlay in huts and yards was fitting and fashionable, now it

has been 'turned into sheep,' as the phrase goes. A proprietor of

advanced views has purchased the place, less for the stock than for the

broad acres, and the improvement Genie has worked his will upon the

erstwhile somnolent wilderness.

The change has been sweeping and comprehensive. The vast area of nearly

half a million of acres has been enclosed and subdivided by the

all-pervading wire-fencing. A couple of hundred thousand merinos, with a

trifle of forty thousand half-grown lambs, now graze at large, without a

shepherd nearer than Queensland. A handsome, well-finished house stands

by the artificial sheet of water, formed by the big dam which spans the

once meagre 'cowall' or anabranch of the main stream.

A windmill-pump irrigates the well-kept garden, where oranges are in

blossom and ripening their golden globes at the same time. Green peas

and cauliflowers, maturing early, appeal to a lower æstheticism. The

stables, the smithy, the store, the men's huts, the carpenter's shop,

form a village of themselves; not a small one either.

A quarter of a mile northward, backed up by a dense clump of pines,

stands the woolshed, an immense building with apparently acres of

roofing and miles of battened floors, £5000 to £6000 representing the

cost. It is now in full blast. We walk over with the centurion to whom

that particularly delicate commission, the captaincy of 'the shed,' has

been entrusted. It is by no means an ordinary sight. We ascend a few

steps at the 'top' of the shed, and look down the centre aisle, where

sixty men are working best pace, as men will only do when the pay is

high, and each man receives all he can earn by superior skill or

strength.

They are chiefly young men, though some are verging on middle age, and

an old man here and there is to be seen. Scarcely any but born

Australians are on the 'board,' as the section devoted to the actual

shearing operation is termed. Though an occasional Briton or foreigner

enters the lists, the son of the soil has long since demonstrated his

superior adaptation to this task, wherein skill and strength are so

curiously blended.

Watch that tall shearer half-way down the line. A native-born

Australian, probably of the second or third generation, he stands six

feet and half an inch, good measurement, in his stockings. His brawny

fore-arm is bare to the elbow. Broad-shouldered, deep-chested,

light-flanked, he would have delighted the eye of Guy Livingstone. You

cannot find any man out of Australia who can shear a hundred and fifty

full-grown sheep in a day—as he can—closely, evenly, with wonderful

seeming ease and rapidity. Like his horsemanship—a marvel in its way—it

has been practised from boyhood, and, as with arts learned early in

life, a perfection almost instinctive has resulted.

The shearers proper are all white men. The pickers-up and sorters of the

fleece are a trifle mixed, the former being chiefly aboriginal blacks,

some of the latter Chinamen. In the pressing demand for labour which

obtains when a thousand sheds are at work, or preparing to shear, in the

early spring months, over the length and breadth of the land, the

inferior races find their opportunity.

A pound a week, lodging, and a liberal diet-scale, render the shearing

season a kind of carnival for the proletariat, from the first fierce

gleam of the desert sun in July, till the mountain snow-plains are

cleared in January and February.

There are eight men at the wool-table—a broad, battened platform—on

which the fleeces are spread, skirted, rolled up, and self-tied by an

ingenious infolding knack, thrown into the wool-sorter's narrow pathway,

and by him transferred to the separate bins of first and second combing,

clothing, super, etc. The next stage carries them to the wool-presses,

which somewhat complicated machinery, aided by skilled and experienced

labourers, turns out daily fifty to sixty neatest, compactest bales.

Thence on trucks propelled to the dumping-press, an hydraulic ram-driven

monster, which reduces them to less than half their former size, and

hoops them with iron bands.

Waggon teams are in attendance at the dumping-sheds, and before sundown

much of the wool that was on the sheep's backs at sunrise will be loaded

up, or on the road to the railway terminus.

Even that bourne of the weary wayfarer by coach, and the dusty, bearded

teamster, is shifting its position nearer and nearer annually to the

great central wilderness. As I ride homeward, the tents of navvy gangs

appear suddenly through the darkening twilight, in the midst of

pine-wood and wilgah brakes. The muffled thunder of blasts is borne ever

and anon through the rarely-vexed atmosphere, as the sandstone hills are

riven. But the central plain once reached, no work but the shallow

trench and the low embankment will be required for hundreds of miles.

In a few years the great pastoral estates will have their own railway

platforms, within easy distance of the 'shed,' when possibly a tramway

thence to the dumping-room will be a recognised and necessary

'improvement.' When that day comes, shearers and washers will arrive by

train from the coast-range, or the 'Never Never' country; King Cobb will

be deposed or exiled; 'Sundowners' will be abolished; and much of the

romance and adventure of pastoral life will have fled for ever.

NEW YEAR'S DAY 1886

In the list of rambles, possible in the event of certain undefined

conditions coming to pass, one fairly-original project has always

commended itself to me. An overland tramp from Sydney to Melbourne in

the garb and character of a swagman seemed to offer special inducements.

Inexpensive as to wearing apparel and including a position not difficult

to keep up, the idea suggested health, variety, and adventure. From such

a standpoint all grades of society might be observed in new and striking

lights.

Circumstances prevented me, during the present holiday season, from

carrying out this plan in its entirety. Nevertheless I found myself, in

company with the usual midsummer contingent of strangers and pilgrims,

in the metropolis of the southern colony; like them in quest of the rare

anodyne which deadens care and allays regret. And what a blessed and

salutary change is this from the inner wastes, the sun-scorched deserts,

whence some of us have emerged but recently! I am not going to cry down

the Bush, the good land of spur and saddle, of manly endeavour and

steadfast endurance, which has done so much for many of us; but after a

long cruise it is conceded that every sailor-man, from foremost Jack to

the Captain bold, needs a 'run ashore.' His health demands it; his

morale is, in the long run, not deteriorated thereby. For analogous

reasons those of us who dwell afar from the green coast-fringe, having

perhaps more than our share of sunshine, require a sea change. Every

bushman, gentle or simple, should compass an annual holiday, which I

recommend him to pass, if possible, in the colony where he does _not_

habitually reside.

'Home-keeping youth have ever homely wit' is an aphorism which has been

variously garbed. I endorse the dictum, with limitations. For the

removal of that insidious mental fungus, provincial prejudice, there is

no remedy like a moderate dose of travel.

Chief among the luxuries in the nature of Christmas gifts with which the

wayfarer is presented on arrival in Melbourne may be reckoned an almost

total immunity from the heat tyranny. The thermometer registers a scale

usually associated with personal discomfort, but oppressiveness is

neutralised by certain adjuncts of civilisation—lofty houses, cool

halls, and shady trees. The ever-sighing sea-breeze—fair Calypso of the

desert-worn Ulysses—invites to soft repose; while the prevalence of ice,

as applied to the manufacture of comforting beverages, transforms thirst

into a disguised blessing. The glare of the noonday sun, so harmful to

the precious gift of sight, even to reason's throne, is here 'blocked,'

to use the prevailing idiom of the week, by a hundred cunning devices.

The marvels of capitalised industry, the results of science, the

miracles of art, are daily displayed. Old friends, new books,

freshly-coined ideas, strange sights, wonder-signs of all shades and

hues, press closely the flying hours. The tired reveller sinks into

dreamless rest each night, only to enter upon a fresh course of

enjoyment and adventure with the opening morn.

I find myself following a multitude on one of the first days after

arrival, not 'to do evil,' it may be humbly asserted, but to behold the

Inter-Colonial Cricket Match. We step out past the Treasury and enter a

side alley of Eden. The broad, asphalted walk leads through an avenue of

over-arching elms—a close, embowered shade over which our enemy, the

sun, has scant power. Anon we cross a winding streamlet, rippling

through a gloom of fern-trees and a miniature tropical forest. There the

thrush and blackbird flit unharmed, the moss velvet carpets the dark

mould, and but a slanting sun-ray flecks the shadows from the

close-ranked lofty exotics—'a place for pleading swain and whispering

lovers made.' But the order of the day for all sorts and conditions of

men and maids is plainly Richmond Park. Only a few deserters are seen

from the ranks of the holiday-seeking army as we thread the leafy

defiles. Presently we emerge upon the unshaded road which, through the

Jolimont estate—erstwhile a Viceregal residence—conducts us to the

Melbourne cricket-ground.

Here, truly, is a sight for unaccustomed eyes. The great enclosure

encircled by ornamental iron railings, larrikin proof, as I am informed,

its level, close-shaved green a turf triumph and species of enlarged

billiard-table as applied to cricket purposes. It is girdled by a ring

of well-grown oaks and elms, through which the glossy-leaved Norfolk

Island fig-trees, pushing their more lavish and intense foliage,

communicate a southern tone.

I stand invested with the privileges of the pavilion, an imposing

three-storeyed edifice, containing all necessary conveniences for the

comfort of the athletes of the contest, as well as of their friends and

well-wishers, who are in the proud position of members. The arrangements

are liberal and comprehensive. Refreshment bars and luncheon tables,

lavatories, dressing-rooms, billiards, and other palliatives are here

provided, while on the western side are asphalted grounds, defended by

wire netting, where the votaries of the racquet and tennis-ball display

their skill. From the graduated tiers of seats in the lower or upper

rooms, as well as from the roof itself, a perfect view of the game may

be obtained; while on either side of the lawn, under cover or otherwise,

full provision is made for the comfort of the gentler sex, always

liberal in patronage of these popular contests. Around the remaining

portions of the enclosure, and protected from the _profanum vulgus_ by a

high iron fence, accommodation is provided for the rank and file of the

spectators, who, at a small cost, are admitted.

The hour is come and the man. Twelve o'clock has struck. New South Wales

has won the toss. From the pavilion gate the manly form of Murdoch is

seen to issue, cricket-armoured, with trusty bat in hand. He enters the

arena amid general plaudits, followed by Alec Bannerman. Then forth file

the eleven champions of Victoria, who spread themselves variously over

the field. Palmer gives the ball a preliminary spin; Blackham stretches

his limbs and stands ready and remorseless—a cricketer's fate—behind the

wicket. The first ball is catapulted—swift speeding, with dangerous

break. Murdoch 'pokes it to the off' or 'puts it to leg,' and the great

encounter has commenced.

Wonderful and chiefly comprehensible must it be to the uninitiated or

the foreigner to mark the rapt attention with which the performance is

viewed by the thousands of all classes and ages who are now gathered

around. Ten thousand people watch every flight of ball or stroke of bat

with eager interest, with prompt, instructed criticism. Wonderful order,

indeed a curious silence, for the most part, prevails. It is too serious

a matter for light converse. The interchange of opinion is conveyed with

bated breath; a narrow escape, to be sure, is noted with a sigh of

relief; a hit with cheers and clapping of hands. When the fatal ball

scatters the stumps, or drops into the hands of the watchful adversary,

one unanimous burst of applause breaks from the vast assemblage. His

Lordship the Bishop of Melbourne, who sits in one of the front seats

watching the scene with an air compounded of interest and toleration,

doubtless wishes that he could secure a congregation on great occasions

so large, so deeply observant, so closely critical, so sincerely

aroused. Doubtless his Lordship, conceding, with the kindly wisdom that

distinguishes him, that the people must have their recreations, would

admit that from no other spectacle could so many persons of all ranks

and ages, and both sexes, derive so large an amount of innocent

gratification.

The 'cricket is so good' that several days elapse before the perhaps

somewhat too-protracted match is over. Heavy scoring on both sides in

the first innings. An exciting finish on the fifth day wrests the

chaplet temporarily from New South Wales. Victoria wins with three

wickets to go down. But those who are willow-wise aver that if—ah me!

those ifs—Spofforth and Massie had been there, the latter with the

advantage of the matchless wicket, another tale might have been told—

From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn,

And Flodden had been Bannockbourne.

* * * * *

The bells have chimed on that fateful midnight when died the old year;

the radiant stranger is a crowned king. In the forenoon we turn our

steps westwards, and enter another of the parks with which this city has

been generously endowed. A holiday-loving race, certes, are we

Australians. Had Victoria been a Roman province, her populace would have

been regally furnished with _panem et circenses_, or known the reason

why. With the eight hours' system, high wages, and frequent holidays,

the working-man of the period, compared with his European brother, is an

aristocrat. But here we are once more on the Flemington race-course, and

of it, as of the Melbourne cricket-ground, we feel inclined to assert

(_pace_ Trollope) that it must be, in its way, the best in the world.

Much thoughtful care has been bestowed upon the grounds, the buildings,

the adjuncts; much money spent since the old days, when it differed

little from an ordinary cattle-paddock. And the results are bewildering.

Whence this lovely lawn 'with verdure clad,' where, amid flowers and

fountains, crowds of well-dressed people stroll and linger, protected as

in their own gardens from inconvenient sound or sight? this broad,

smooth terrace-promenade below the Stand? this immense edifice, where in

sheltered comfort every stride of the race can be seen? these perfect

arrangements for the protagonists—brute and human—in the Olympian games

we have come to witness? Is this the place where often amid heat and

dust, not infrequently under soaking showers, the same sports have been

witnessed by the much-enduring crowd? or has the Eastern enchanter of

our boyhood carried off the ancient race-course bodily, and replaced it

with this garden of Armida?

If the surroundings are complete, and the concomitants exhilarating, the

weather is delicious. All things have combined to make this first-born

of the opening year a day of days. The unobtrusive sun is merely warm;

the bright, blue sky softly toned by fleeting clouds; the sea-breeze

whispers of the wave's cool marge and ocean caves.

'On such a day it were a joy to die,' and as in the first race—the

'Hurdle'—one beholds Sparke's rider pulling desperately at the chain-bit

in his horse's mouth, as he fights madly for the lead, it appears but

too probable that he is destined for the sacrifice. The violent

chestnut, however, contrary to an established theory, does not run

himself out, or smash his jockey. He retains the lead gallantly, and,

with the exception of a perilous bang over the last hurdle, touches

nothing. He wins the race from end to end, confounding the backers of

Lady Hampden and Vanguard, the latter horse having carried a hurdle on

his hocks for some distance, and so lost his very good show in the race.

Archie wins the Bagot Plate, confirming his friends in their previous

good opinion. Those, however, who backed him for 'the Standish' on the

strength of it, are doomed to furnish another example of the 'you never

can tell' theory, as he is therein beaten by Mr. Charles Lloyd's

Chuckster. The remaining races are well contested, and many a good horse

extends himself ere the Criterion Stakes, the last race on the

programme, are won; but, curious to relate, one feels more interested in

the people nowadays than in the horses. The pleasant walks and talks,

which are possible in this equine paradise, detract from the keen

interest with which formerly the possible winners were regarded. Even

the luncheon at a friend's table (one of a series provided by the

Management), with its accompaniments of smiles, champagne, and lightsome

converse, takes its place as a principal event. Afternoon tea, not less

pleasant in its way, succeeds; after which function the mass of

handsomely-appointed equipages in the carriage enclosure begins to

disintegrate, driving up singly to the side entrance. Whether the beer,

presumably imbibed by the coachman, has got into the horses' heads, I am

unable to state; but the latter prefer the use of their hind-legs

temporarily. This effervescence, however, soon subsides. The

four-in-hands depart. Carriage after carriage rolls away; their

daintily-attired occupants are whirled off safely. _Nous autres_ take

the Flemington road, or fight for a railway seat; and a day of pleasure,

marked with a white stone for some of us, comes cheerily to an end.

A DRY TIME

As I ride, as I ride,

With a full heart for my guide.

BROWNING.

The moon has waxed and waned, yet one may not, in 1883, recall with the

poet

The lonesome October

Of a most immemorial year,

inasmuch as that month in these Southern wilds is for the most part a

gleesome, companionable time, rich in flower-birth and fruit-promise.

None the less, if the windows of heaven be not the sooner opened, the

present year of our Lord will be aught but immemorial in the chronicles

of the land.

Surely the blessed dews of heaven, the rain for which in these arid

wastes all Nature cries aloud, will not long be denied. How clearly can

we realise the force of the strong Saxon of the Vulgate, 'And the famine

was sore in the land.'

Here now exists the same hopeless, long-protracted absence of all

moisture which drove the Patriarch to 'travel' with his flocks and

herds, viz. camels and she-asses, his sons and their families, from

dried-out Canaan to the rich 'frontage' of the Nile. Here, as then, in

that far historic dawn, is dust where grass grew and water ran. Strange

birds crowd the scanty pools, while among the great hordes of live

stock, reared in plenteous seasons, the strong are lean and sad-eyed,

the weak are perishing daily with increasing rapidity.

The hand of man, which has done so much to reclaim these wondrous

wastes, is powerless against Nature's cruel fiat. None can do more than

wait and pray; for the end must come, when the days shorten and the

nights grow cold, even in this summer land; and utter, unredeemed ruin

is the goal towards which many of the proprietors have perforce turned

their eyes these many weary months past.

The fair but fleeting promise of the bygone month has been unredeemed.

Only a few days of the threatening sun have sufficed to wither the

tender herbage, the springing plantlets which essayed to cover the baked

soil. The broad road seems that veritable way to Avernus, so bare,

sun-scorched, adust is it, for hundreds of leagues. Far away one may

note its swaying deflections, and hold a parallel course, guided solely

by the well-nigh continuous dust-line of the waggon-trains.

Yet, maugre the terrors of the time, certain feathered inhabitants have

their provision secured to them. How else trip and flit from myall twig

to pine bough, bright-eyed and fearless, this pair of delicious tiny

doves? The most exquisitely formed and delicately lovely of all the

Columba family, they are, perhaps, the smallest—not larger than the

brown bush-quail. Not half the size of the crested pigeon, there is a

family resemblance in the fairy pink legs, the pointed tail, the bronze

bars of the wing-feathers, the tones of the soft, azure breast. By no

means a shy bird, as if conscious that few fowlers could be cruel to the

hurt of so delicate a thing of beauty, so rare a feathered gem, in these

stern solitudes.

Not that all the tribes of the air can be described as beautiful and

harmless. Riding slowly through a belt of timber, musing, it may be, on

the undeserved sorrows of the lower animals, I am suddenly and violently

assaulted—'bonneted,' as the humorous youth of the period has it. I

clutch my hat just in time to save it from being knocked off. There are

two round holes near the brim, which I had not previously observed, and

a cock magpie is flying back to his station on a tree hard by, much

satisfied in his mind. It is a well-known habit of this bold, aggressive

bird in the breeding season. He keeps watch, apparently, the livelong

day, hard by the nest, and, pledged to drive away intruders, is no

respecter of persons. Long years since, the present writer was similarly

attacked; when essaying to lift his hat some hours afterwards, and

finding resistance, he discovered that the bird's beak had penetrated

the felt and inflicted a smart cut. Blood had actually been shed, and,

having dried, caused adhesion. The 'piping crow,' as ornithologically

the magpie of the colonies is designated, is not truly a magpie at all.

He is carnivorous and insectivorous. Withal a handsome bird, with glossy

raven breast and back, and most melodious, flute-like carol, at earliest

morn and eve. He is easily tamed, and in captivity learns to talk, to

whistle, and even to swear with clearness and accuracy—more particularly

the last accomplishment. As a member of the household, he exhibits great

powers of adaptation, has the strongest conviction as to his rank and

position, despises children, whose undefended legs he pecks, and will

engage in desperate combat with dog or cat, turkey or gamecock. An

Australian naturalist of eminence gives his testimony to the courage

with which a tame bird of the species relieved the tedium of a

homeward-bound voyage by its constant duels with such gamecocks as the

coops produced.

Feeding in the open plain, and in a leisurely way inspecting the sparse

vegetation with an eye to grasshoppers, strolls a bustard with his mate.

This noble game-bird, the wild turkey of the colonists, is fully equal,

perhaps superior, in flavour to his tame congener. Longer in neck and

limb, crane-like of head, the plumage presents several points of

resemblance which justifies his title to the name. He has also the trick

of strutting with drooped wings and outspread tail before the female.

Shy and difficult of approach by the sportsman on foot, he is easily

circumvented by riding or driving around in circles, gradually

narrowing, when an easy shot is gained.

A reminiscence arises here of the regal sport of hawking enjoyed in

connection with a bird of this species. Hard hit with double B, he found

it difficult to rise above the tall grass of the marshy plain where he

had been stalked, though gradually gaining strength. As he cleared the

reed-tops, a wedge-tailed eagle (the eagle-hawk of the colonists)

swooped down from airy heights and dashed at the huge bird like a merlin

at a thrush. Very nearly did the 'lammergeier' make prize of him, but

the long sweep of the bustard's wing kept him ahead. Presently he got

'way on,' assisted by a slight breeze. Down the wind went hawk and

quarry, neck and neck, so to speak, while the sportsman put his horse to

speed, going straight across country, with head up and eyes fixed on the

pair, as they gradually rose higher in the sky. Ever and anon the eagle

would make a dash at the wounded bird, but whether the temporary shock

had only staggered him, or that it was nature's last effort, the edible

one soared away far and fast, eventually disappearing from our gaze.

While on the subject of hawking, there is little doubt that the 'aguila'

referred to might be trained to fly at the larger game—turkeys, geese,

kangaroo, and emu—while the smaller falcons, which are sufficiently

plentiful, might be equally effective in pursuit of the traditional

heron. The beautiful blue crane of the colonists (_Ardea Australis_) is

found in every streamlet and marsh, as also the spoonbill, the white

crane (snowy of hue, and with curious fringing wing-feathers), not

forgetting the bittern.

Young Australia, gentle or simple, might find worse employment than

riding forth in the fresh morn of the early summer, with hawk on wrist,

inhaling even this faintest flavour of the romance of the great days of

chivalry.

On the broad, still reaches of the river, or the wide sheets of water

artificially conserved, behold we the pelican, in no wise differing in

appearance from the traditional dweller in the wilderness. Whether the

Australian is unselfishly prodigal in the matter of heart's blood in

favour of her young is difficult of proof, forasmuch as no living man,

apparently, ever sets eyes on a youthful pelican. In the untrodden

deserts which surround the heart of the continent is popularly deemed to

lie the haunt of the brooding bird; and an Australian poetess has

mourned the fate of the gallant brothers—bold and practised

explorers—last seen on their way to the unknown, half-mystic region,

'where the pelican builds her nest.'

As the hot breath of the fast-coming summer proves yet more deadly to

every green thing, the pelican flocks sail coastward in great numbers

from their failing streams and marshes. With them comes the beautiful

black swan—'rara avis in terra,' but here an everyday sight—graceful,

with scarlet beak, wreathed neck, and 'pure cold webs'; the wild,

musical note clanging from the soaring, swaying files cleaving the

empyrean. Rarely-seen waders and swimmers are of the contingent if the

'weather holds dry'—a wayworn, far-travelled host, priceless to the

naturalist could he but observe them.

Let but the stern drought continue unbroken, all-heedless of man and his

great army of dependants, through the brief spring, the long summer—till

the days shorten and (even here) the nights grow cold—unprecedented

losses must occur in certain localities. Still, hope is not dead. The

dry zone is restricted in area. Outside and around it, what the

shepherds term 'fine storms' have refreshed the pastures. Even yet there

is corn in Egypt.[4] There is grass and to spare beyond the Queensland

border. Thither will many a sorely-oppressed proprietor send a section

of flock or herd, availing himself of the time-honoured institution of

'travelling for feed.' Such, neither more nor less, was the last resort

of those grand historic sheiks of the desert, even Abraham and Lot, when

'the land was not able to bear them'; and to such an alternative must

the latter-day, salt-bush sheik turn in his need, or see his live stock

perish before his eyes, in thousands and ten thousands.

Footnote 4:

There is no corn in Egypt now (as far as Queensland is referred to) it

must be admitted with deep regret. The famine in the land has reached

the biblical record of 'seven years of drouth.'

He will improvise a nomadic establishment with dray and tent, shepherds

and cooks, stock-riders and bullock-drivers, horses and cattle,

everything save camels, needed in a patriarchal migration. Even these

last ungainly thirst-defiers are now bred in Australia. Hard by the

tropic he will pass into a land of grass prairies and flooded

streams—the promised land of the desert-worn hosts. He will here find

himself—'most ingenious paradox'—in a region where live stock are

high-priced, but where 'country' is cheap. He will rent, perhaps

purchase another run. The drought which drove him forth may so and in

such manner make his fortune yet. Let us hope so, in all sympathy and

good fellowship. There he will reach his haven of rest. He may sell out

again, or decide to cast in his fortunes with the newer colony, but in

any case he will remain there until, as far as King Sol is concerned,

'this tyranny be over-past.'

AUSTRALIAN COLLIES

In the stage of the early history of New South Wales, when her

increasing herds bid fair to overspread the waste, the dog, his ancient

and faithful servant, came to the aid of man. The Scotch collie, friend

of the lonely hill-shepherd in North Britain from time immemorial, was

unanimously elected to fill the responsible position—not, however, as

being the only available canine connected with stock management, for the

Smithfield drover's dog had also emigrated, that wonderful stump-tailed

animal, which managed to keep his master's cattle separate at the great

London mart, though thousands of beeves be around, unfenced and

unyarded. Matchless in his own department, he was gradually superseded

by the collie, which came to the front as a better all-round dog, more

intelligent, faithful, and companionable; when trained, equally suitable

for the 'working' of sheep or cattle.

The breed, at first pure as imported, became crossed with other

varieties of the multiform genus _Canis_, and so suffered partial

deterioration. Still, such was the original potency of the collie

proper, that many of the mongrels, even the product of the ovicidal

'dingo,' were excellent workers, in some instances even superior to

their pure-bred comrades. The climate, too, appeared to be favourable to

the breed. The Australian offspring of the imported collies were

handsome, vigorous animals, with correct 'flag and feather,' yet

reproducing the traits of fidelity and human attachment concerning which

so many a tale was told, poem written, and picture painted in the old

land. The 'harder' or fiercer animals were chosen for cattle work, and

being bred for the qualities of 'heeling,' and even doing a mild

imitation of bull-baiting on occasions, became almost a distinct breed.

In the old-fashioned cattle districts, like Monaro and the Abercrombie

River, where in early days a sheep was never seen, the cattle dogs—true

collies in appearance and extraction—were very different in their

manners and customs from their sheep-guiding relatives of the settled

districts, whose 'bark was (so much) worse than their bite.'

It was quite the other way with the cattle dogs. They were encouraged to

'heel' or bite the fetlocks of the stubborn, half-wild cattle, in a way

which bustled them along as crack or cut of stockwhip could never

effect. In the case of a breaking beast they would hang on to his tail,

and perhaps, when bringing back a wild yearling to the yard, assault

tail, heels, nose, and ears impartially, with dire results. They ran

their chance of being kicked or horned at this rough-and-tumble game,

but from practice became exceeding wary of these and other dangers. A

cattle dog has been seen to 'work' (or help drive) a drove of horses,

heeling when desired to do so most impartially, and yet managing to keep

clear of the dangerous kicks which the half-wild colts aimed at him.

Every man of experience with stock will bear testimony to the admirable

service which a good cattle dog will perform. Wearied and

low-conditioned droves they will 'move' in a way which no amount of whip

and shouting will effect. On the other hand, where caution and diplomacy

are required, their sagacity is astonishing.

I once had occasion, 'in the forties,' to drive a small lot of fat

cattle some days' journey to a coast town in Western Victoria. They had

come to me in a deal, and I wished to turn them into cash. It was a good

way from home. The vendors simply 'cut them out' from the camp,

accompanied me to the Run boundary, and gave me their blessing. I had no

mate but an ancient cattle dog. It may be surmised by the experienced

how many times the home-bred cattle tried to break back. Again and again

I thought they would have beaten me. I kept one side, the dog Peter the

other, necessarily. Had either rashly caused a separation the game was

up. It was beautiful to see the old dog's generalship. If a beast

diverged on his side, he would walk solemnly out, keep wide and dodge

him in with the smallest expenditure of voice or emotion. By this time

some of the others would be looking back, preparatory to a dash

homeward. These he would hustle up promptly, just sufficiently and no

more. That I was watchful on my side needs no telling; an occasional tap

or whipcrack kept them going. Even fat cattle know when the stockwhip is

absent. We—I say it advisedly—yarded them safely that night, when a

well-managed hostelry consoled me for the frightful anxiety I had

undergone. Next day they travelled more resignedly, and the third night

saw them delivered to 'the man of flesh and blood' in Portland, and,

what was better still, paid for.

In the Port Fairy district, then chiefly devoted to cattle, were many

famous cattle collies. Old Mr. Teviot at Dunmore had three I remember,

their peculiarity being that they understood nothing but Lowland Scotch,

in which dialect they had, though Australian by birth, been trained.

'Far yaud' (as Dandie Dinmont says), and other mysterious commands,

wholly unintelligible to us youngsters, they understood and obeyed

promptly. But it was amusing to watch the air of surprise or

indifference with which they regarded the stock-riders, who sometimes in

time of need suggested 'Fetch 'em along, boy!' or 'Go on outside.' Like

most people to whom dogs are wildly attached, Mr. Teviot was austere of

manner towards them, feeding regularly, but permitting no familiarity.

How they loved him in consequence! If returning from a trip to the

township after dark, they would listen for the footfall of his horse,

and long before human ear caught the far, faint sound, would rise up

solemnly and walk half a mile or more along the road to greet him. These

dogs were popularly credited with being able to do anything but talk,

and were renowned throughout the country-side for their obedience and

thorough comprehension of their owner's wishes.

I once owned a cattle collie of great intelligence, by name Clara, the

daughter of a one-eyed female of the species, celebrated for her

'heeling' propensities. The mother was uncertain as to temper, and was

often soundly chastised by her owner for erratic work or short-comings.

After a good flogging she jumped up and fawned upon him with the fondest

affection, thus verifying the ancient adage. But Clara was a gentle and

kindly creature though a good driver, and in all respects strangely

intelligent, a handsome black and tan as to colour. In yard work she

showed out to the greatest advantage. Always keenly observant at such

times, and curiously eager to assist—leaving a very young family on one

occasion. One day in particular a panel of the stock-yard was broken;

there was no time for repairs. But Clara was on guard, and there she

stayed, never letting a beast through till the drafting was over.

Poor Clara! she met with an early death. Coming back from a muster, she

was forgotten in the hurry and bustle. The weather was hot; the distance

greater than usual. It was supposed that she died of thirst, or was

killed by the dingoes, for she was never seen alive afterwards.

Peter, a Sydney-side dog, brought down by his owner before 1840 or

thereabouts, with some of the early herds, was probably one of the

cleverest animals in his way that ever followed a beast. His owner was a

Sydney native of the 'flash gully-raking sort,' from whom probably Peter

had received his education in indifferent company. We judged this from

the cautious and unobtrusive way in which he went about his work. He was

a medium-sized, dark-coloured dog, wiry and active. He was not fond of

working for any one but his master, who could make him do all sorts of

queer things. When he came into the kitchen and the maidservants chaffed

him, he had only to whisper 'Heel 'em, Peter!' and the next minute the

girls would be screaming and scampering, with Peter's teeth very close

to their ankles. When tired—and they often travelled far and fast—he

would come to the horse's fore-leg and beg to be taken up. Pulled up to

the pommel of the saddle, he would sit upright, quite gravely, leaning

against his master until he was sufficiently rested; then, when dropped

to earth, he would go to work with amazing vigour. If any particular

beast kicked him, he would wait till there was a crush at a gate, and

'heel' that very animal to a certainty at a time when it was impossible

to retaliate.

The collie, on the other hand, whom fate had destined to a less romantic

association with sheep, was trained and exercised differently. He was

expected to guide and intimidate his timorous, delicate, though often

frantic and obstinate charge chiefly by the sound of his voice and a

threatening manner. Biting was forbidden under severe penalties.

'Working wide'—that is, continually running beyond, ahead, outside of

the flock, which was therefore turned, stopped, or directed—was

inculcated in every possible way. It is to be noted that the fashion is

chiefly inherited, the untrained puppy of pure blood doing most of it as

naturally as the pointer puppy lifts his fore-leg. A slight nip now and

then in driving weary or obstinate sheep is permitted, but nothing

approaching injury to the easily-hurt flock. It is an interesting sight

to mark a trained collie walking back and forward in the rear of a large

flock, intimating to them as plainly as possible without speech that

they are to move along steadily in a given path, and, though permitted

to nibble as they go, by no means to straggle unduly.

Then observe that shepherd with his flock of, say, two or three

thousand. If strong and in good order, the 'head' will string out fully

half a mile in advance of the 'body' and 'tail.' If left alone they will

soon be out of sight at the rear-guard. Then a division would follow,

and once away, after nightfall, wild dogs and dangers are on every side

of them. Nor could the shepherd on foot, as he is always, run round

ahead and turn them. By the time he reached the head, the tail would be

marching in a different direction. When he turned them, the head would

be gone again, etc. etc.

But mark the dog! Despatched by a wave of the hand, he races off at full

speed. He flies round the scattered sheep, keeping wide, however, and so

consolidating them, until he reaches the leaders, which, directly they

see him, scurry back to the centre of the flock. Returning, he walks

dutifully behind, with the air of one who has fulfilled his mission. In

half an hour perhaps the same performance is repeated. In the middle of

the day, if warm, the flock indulges in a 'camp' by a water-hole or

other suitable locality. As it feeds home to the yard, very little of

the morning activity is observed. Our collie, while watchful and ready

for a lightning dash at a moment's notice, walks soberly behind,

evidently contented with the day's work.

As the New Zealand shepherd, a man in his best years of strength and

activity, is a different man from the elderly and often feeble shepherd

of Australia, so the collie of Maoriland, having to climb rock-strewn

defiles, and search amid glacier plateaux and savage solitudes, for the

scattered, half-wild flocks, has an air of seriousness and

responsibility. There is but little frolic and gamesomeness about _him_.

The dogs of Ettrick and Yarrow, accustomed to snow and the blasts of an

iron winter, claim kinship with him. Compelled to act on his own

discretion, he tracks outliers, finds and collects his flock in all

weathers.

'Sirrah, ma mon, they're awa!' says James Hogg to his wonderful collie,

the 'dark-grey puppy' that he bought for a pound, if I mistake not. The

dog, in the drear darkness of a snowstorm, goes forth, and hours

afterwards is found guarding the four hundred lost lambs, not one being

missing.

So when muster-day comes, the New Zealand collie makes for the mountain

peaks: on the lonely plain far above the snow-line, where in severe

seasons a hundred sheep may be found dead and frozen, he beats and

quarters his country, till he finds and brings down to the appointed

place all the straggling lots that may have summered there.

Independently of the qualities necessary for the successful mobilisation

of sheep, the collie is, perhaps, of all the sub-varieties of the canine

race, the most faithful and sympathetic. Time after time has one

observed the tramping shepherd or swagman and his dog. Poor and

despised, 'remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,' the forlorn wayfarer

had one staunch friend—one faithful ally—that regarded not his poverty,

his lowly condition, his lack of self-denial. Who has not marked the

tramp asleep _sub Jove_ at daylight, with scant shelter or covering, his

watchful dog sitting near, prepared to show his teeth, or indeed do

something more, at the nearer approach of the stranger? The dog of the

imprisoned shepherd, immured by Sir Hugo de Pentonville for inebriety,

lies stretched disconsolately before the prison gate, howling at

intervals, apparently in deepest despair, betraying on the other hand

the most frantic joy at his release. The railway favourite goes heavily,

mourning as unmistakably as a Christian—more sincerely than some—in

abstracted gloom, melancholy gait, and aimless daily search for his

master, untimely slain by the remorseless Juggernaut. A hundred times

has one caught the watchful eye of affection with which the collie

regards his ragged owner, as if fearing to lose the least word or

gesture.

And though the recipients of this unstinted devotion rarely appear to

appreciate the gift so lavishly bestowed, it must be recorded, for the

honour of human nature, that instances of the contrary _do_ occur. But

the other day, a lonely pilgrim, who had been ailing few weeks past, was

found by the good Samaritan, cold in death, with his arm _round his

dog's neck_. A shepherd will carry the young family of his (female)

collie, born during a journey, tied in a handkerchief, at much

expenditure of toil and trouble. In many an instance blood feuds, savage

conflicts ending in manslaughter—suicides even—have occurred, connected

with injustice, real or fancied, to the 'dawg.' 'Love me, love my dog,'

is an ancient adage by no means without force in Australia. But recently

a farmer deliberately shot a neighbour whom he accused, wrongfully or

otherwise, of killing his dog. Prior to that occurrence a shepherd,

noticed to be despondent for days past, telling one inquirer that some

one had poisoned his dog, _hanged himself_.

Touching the price of a really good dog, it may range from two pounds to

twenty—an owner often declaring that he would not part with his dog for

the last-named sum. Within the present month, indeed, two legal

processes, to the writer's knowledge, have been put in force in the

collie interest. In one case £10 was sued for as being the value of a

cattle dog, alleged to have been illegally poisoned. The other was

nothing less than a 'Search-warrant for stolen goods and chattels,'

commanding the Sergeant of Police and all constables of Bundabah to make

diligent search, in the daytime, at the residence of the man referred

to, whose name is not known, but who can be identified, for the said

black collie slut, named in the information as 'feloniously stolen,

taken, and carried away as aforesaid, and if you find the same, that you

secure the said black collie slut, and bring the person in whose custody

you find the same before me, or some other justice of the

peace.—(Signed) JOHN JONES, J.P.'

At the annual pastoral and agricultural shows, the trial of sheep dogs

has never-failing interest for the spectators. Most curious is it to

note the gravity with which each competing collie essays to drive three

wildish paddocked sheep into a very small fold of hurdles.

The free exhibition of strychnine, rendered necessary by the incursions

of the dingo, and, 'sorrow it were and shame to tell,' by the increase

of foxes, has led to the death of many a valued collie. But good animals

are now carefully looked after. Greater attention is paid to breeding.

Dogs of the best strains are annually imported. And as the ranks of

Australian collies are thus recruited with pure blood and high-class

animals, it is not too much to assert, that as a stock dog, our

Australian collie is not inferior to his British ancestors, while he may

claim even a wider range of accomplishments and experience.

IN THE BLOOM OF THE YEAR

The first week of December! And seeing that we are in the realm of

Australia, in the district of Riverina, where the season has been wet,

which is 'dry country' English for triumphantly prosperous, also that

vegetable growth is at its acme, we regard our title as fully justified.

All plant-life is now profusely, riotously luxuriant. A drenching

winter, following a wet autumn, preceded a late, showery spring; thus,

and because of which, the pastures and cornfields, the orchards and

gardens, are rich with verdure and promise to a degree unknown since the

proverbial year of 1870.

Some few sultry days have we had, but the true Australian summer has

not, so far, appeared in its lurid, wasting splendour. Hardly a ripening

tinge is yet visible on the wide-waving prairies, the bespangled

meadows, the shaded forest lawns. Wild flowers of every shape and

hue—blue and scarlet, pink and orange, white and yellow, perfumed or

scentless—glorify the landscape.

As we drive along, this balmy, breezy, sun-bright day, through the

champaign, which lies anear and around an inland country town, let us

(if haply it may tend to dispel some small portion of the ignorance of

our British friends as to the 'bush of Australia') put on record the

'scenes and sounds of a far clime' in this season of the year.

The wheat crops, standing strong and level for leagues around, as high,

generally, as the rail fence which protects them, have not as yet been

assailed; but the reaper and binder has made many a foray into the

hayfields. Here we notice one of the results of machinery. In the

majority of instances the oats, though green of hue, are in sheaves and

stooks. The time-honoured spring romance of fragrant haycocks is

hastening to its doom, inasmuch as the greater portion of the oat-crop

saved is intended to be reduced into chaff, as being more portable or

saleable in that form. It is obviously better economy, by using the

reaper and string-binder, to have it arranged mechanically in sheaves

and hand-placed in stooks. It is then more convenient for loading,

stacking, and the final operation of the chaff-cutter. Most of these

sheaves are six feet and over in height. Heavy-headed, too, withal. We

were informed that four tons of chaff to the acre is not an uncommon

yield this year. The lambs, which are running with their mothers in the

great enclosures, wire-fenced and ring-barked as to timber, through

which the high road passes, are wonderfully well-grown and

healthy-looking. The percentage, averaging from eighty to ninety, is

exceptionally high, when it is considered that the expense of tendance

is nominal. From five to seven thousand ewes—even more sometimes—are

running in each paddock, unwatched and untended till marking-time,

thence to the shearing, which is also the weaning period. This year the

shepherd-kings have a right royal time of it, though not more than

sufficient to compensate them for the losses and crosses of the last

decade. Apropos of this woolly people, here approaches an aged shepherd.

He is mounted, so that he has received his cheque. Solvent and resolved,

he is journeying to the town, on pleasure bent, of a rational nature let

us hope. The flies of mid-day are troublesome, but he has a net-veil

round his weather-beaten face; so has the steady veteran steed. The

collie, following dutifully, is unprotected from flies, but accoutred

with a wire muzzle—not, as the young lady from the city supposed, to

prevent his biting the sheep, but lest he should swallow the

innocent-seeming morsel of meat by the wayside, intended for vagrom

canines, and containing the deadly crystals of strychnine. Certes, with

plenteousness the land runs o'er, this gracious year of our Lord 1887.

The cattle lounging about the roads—the roads, like the fields,

knee-deep in thick green grass—with their shining coats and plump

bodies, testify to the bounty of the season. The birds call and twitter.

The skylark, faint reflex as he is of his English compeer, yet mounts

skyward and sings his shorter lay rejoicingly. The wild-duck, gladsome

and unharmed, swims in the meres which here and there divide the river

meadows. The fat beeves in the paddock ruminate contemplatively, or

recline around some patriarchal tree. All nature is joyous; the animated

portion 'rich in spirits and health,' the vegetable contingent spreading

forth and burgeoning in unchecked development. As we pass Bungāwannāh,

one of the large estates, formerly squattages, which alternate with the

farms and smaller pastoral holdings, a fallow doe with her fawn starts

up from the long grass, gazing at us with startled but mildly-timid eye.

They are outliers from a herd of nearly a hundred, which have increased

from a few head placed there by a former proprietor.

In this our Centennial year it must be conceded that Australia is a land

of varied products. We pass orchards where the apples are reddening

fast, where apricots are turning pink, and the green fig slowly filling

its luscious sphere. We note the vivid green of the many-acred

vineyards, now in long rows, giving an air of formal regularity to the

cultivated portion of the foreground. Then we descry the dark green and

gold of an orangery, hard by the river-bank—in this year a most

profitable possession to the proprietor.

Amid this abundance we miss one figure sufficiently familiar to the

traveller in other lands, or the European resident, viz. 'the poor man.'

He may be somewhere about, but we do not encounter him. He does not

solicit alms, at any rate. His nearest counterpart is the swagman or

pedestrian labourer. He is differentiated from the shearer and the

'rouseabout' (the shearing-shed casual labourer), who travel, the former

invariably, the latter occasionally, on horseback. But the humble

dependant upon the aristocratic squatter or prosperous farmer is a

well-fed, fairly well-dressed personage, who affords himself an

unlimited allowance of tobacco. Say that he elects to journey afoot in

an equestrian country, he needs pity or charity from no man.

When one thinks of England, with its three hundred souls to the square

mile, one cannot but be thankful, in spite of the ignorant, insolent

diatribes of the Ben Tillett agitator class, for the condition of the

labouring classes in this favoured country. They are at a premium, and

will be for years to come, while tens of thousands of acres of arable

land are awaiting the hands which shall clear and plant them. Meanwhile,

a small annual rent is obtained for the State by means of purely

pastoral possession—a form of occupation destined to be surely, if

slowly, superseded by agriculture, when demanded by the needs of a more

developed epoch and a denser population.