Chapter XXVI: Act V (6)

But this savours of the digressive. Where are we? Whither is this plaguey, many-sided, chiefly unnecessary, or wholly superfluous, mental apparatus, as some hold (being rarely serviceable in the muck-rake or money-storing business), leading us? To fairyland but yesternight; anon to Albion, Germany, Rome, amid Liberal Ministers even, to their Austral countrymen all too illiberal, stepfatherly, stern, repressive. Prose and the present to the rescue! So we fare on, the trooper and I, along the course of the Macdonald, in the fresh purity of this New England summer morn. How blithe and gladsome are all things! Hard is it to believe that disease, death, and unforeseen disaster can exist in so fair a world! The river ripples merrily onward, or sleeps in deep pools under o'erhanging oaks, whence the shy wild-duck floats out with dusky brood, or the heron rises from the reedy marge and sweeps along the winding stream. Masses of granite overhang the water. The everlasting hills rear themselves, scarped and terraced, at dizzy altitudes on either side. The late rains have lent a velvet, emerald tinge to the thick-growing matted sward. Marguerites, dandelions, white and yellow immortelles, the crimson bunches of hakea, fringed violets, with bright purple masses of swainsonia, diversify mead and upland. Tiny rills and springheads show a well-watered country—'a land that drinks the rain of Heaven at will.' Ever and anon the willow, with foliage of vivid tender green, contrasts with the sombre filaments of the river oak.

My companion is an active, intelligent young fellow—a native-born Australian, whose fair hair and steadfast grey-blue eyes show that the Anglo-Saxon type is not likely to alter materially in Southern Britain.

He and his horse are well suited—the latter a well-bred bay, fast at a finish, and ready to stay for ever. He has done a hundred miles on end before now, and been ridden twenty hours out of the twenty-four. In more than one skirmish, when revolvers were out, he has proved steady under fire, and is the very model, in appearance, in condition, and pace, of what a charger should be in a troop of Irregular Horse. As he stretches along with smooth, fast, easy stride, he looks as quiet as a lamb, and what superficial critics call 'properly broken in.' None the less will he refuse to let a stranger bridle, much less ride him; he would in such case snort and plunge like an unbacked colt.

I have had no experience of the metropolitan police, against whom it is occasionally the wont of a section of the press to say hard things. These may be true or false, for what I know, though I am disposed to believe the latter. But for the last twenty years I have had much knowledge of the mounted portion of the New South Wales force in the towns and districts of the interior, and I willingly record my testimony—not being in official relations with them at present—that a more efficient, well-disciplined, well-behaved body of men—smart, serviceable, and self-respecting—does not exist in any part of the world. In old days they were sometimes at a disadvantage against outlaws, who could ride and track like Comanchee Indians, the police being chiefly of British birth and rearing. But the mounted troopers are now largely recruited from natives of the colony, or men who have lived here from their youth. In one of these, as in my guide of to-day, the cattle-thief or other criminal has a pursuer to contend with as well mounted as himself, and fully his match in all the arcana of bushcraft.

But good as the white Australian may be at following a track, his sable compatriot is a degree better. A tamed preadamite, either borrowed for the occasion from a squatter, or attached by pay and cast-off uniform to a police-barrack, makes a matchless sleuth-hound. Such a one, I am told, helped to run down a notorious party of horse-thieves in these very mountains, following with astonishing accuracy the marauders, who travelled _only by night_, using every artifice as well to blind tracks and divert pursuers.

We cross the river once more, and note an island, upon which in floodtime a leading pastoral proprietor was washed down and nearly drowned. Another mile discovers a picturesquely-situated homestead, overlooking the river, where, winding round a granite promontory, it turns westward on its way to the great plain beyond the 'divide.' The roses proclaim their vicinity to the famed Bendemeer, the decomposed granite having a special chemical affinity; while the violets, large of leaf and profuse of bloom, seem as if prepared to found a new variety, so widely do they differ from the ordinary floweret.

For half a century or more has the venerable pioneer dwelt hard by the river-brim, where now, handsomely lodged, garden-surrounded, he dispenses hospitality, with all the concomitants of successful pastoral life around him, save and excepting only the wife and bairns, the stalwart sons and bright-eyed daughters, with which so worthy and energetic a colonist should have strengthened the State. But 'non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum'; it is not every man's lot thus to wind up life's tale. And it may be conceded that he who at an advanced age, retaining every faculty unimpaired, is permitted to view the work of his hands, conducted from the stage of the untamed wild to smiling prosperity, who can look forward cheerfully to end his days among a population entirely composed of friends and well-wishers, has secured a large proportion of the good which is permissible to mortal man.

Onward, still onward, ride we, for many a mile must be passed ere sunset. Onward through rugged defiles and rock-strewn passes, over which the sure-footed steeds are constrained to clamber like chamois. Indeed we are nearly blocked in consequence of adopting one very tempting 'cut,'—by the way, in bush parlance, the old English predicate has been eliminated, and with reason; one does not speak of a 'long cut,'—for we find ourselves in the centre of a rock labyrinth locally termed a 'gaol.' The path, however, amid the huge boulders eventually conducts us to a grand granite-floored terrace, apparently constructed by one of the Kings of Bashan. Here we have a wide, extended view of the varied landscape, 'valley and mountain and woodland,' but it does not otherwise serve our purpose.

Speedily recovering lost ground, we strike the creek and the tin mines thereon located, which had been the cause of the exploration. The sanguine, undaunted prospectors are as usual delving and ditching, felling the forest, constructing dams, and generally committing assault and robbery upon patient mother Hertha.

We see the stream tin being washed out everywhere, like dark-coloured pebbly gravel. We note where the same rivulet has been formerly ravaged by the wandering mining hordes. We thread the gorges which lead into a rock-walled alpine valley, not inaptly named the 'Giant's Den,' and there meet with tin—more tin—_toujours_ tin. For this fastness of the Titans has been turned into the Grand United Sluicing Company—no liability, let us say—and for the ten thousandth time, more or less, we admire the indomitable pluck and sanguine confidence of the miner proper. Here steam engines, pumping machinery, iron piping by the mile, dams, houses, men and material, are all found, in different stages of adaptation to an end. Evidently the shareholders, some of whom are practical men of transcolonial experience, have faith in the venture. The energetic Victorian captain beguiles us into a long, hot, pedestrian tour of inspection. He, always in advance, shovel on shoulder, prospects from time to time, and 'pans out,' with invariable success, the stanniferous gravel. Sooth to say, we have reached at length the mystic region where there is no 'want of tin.' It occurs everywhere in abundance—in new ground, in old workings, in mullock, in trenches, in each and every conceivable place. At the end of our bit of training, which mentally places us on a footing with Weston and other 'peds' of fame, we express our opinion that, with a steady supply of water for ground-sluicing, the Company should pay handsome dividends for years to come. The energetic captain, 'bred and born in a briar patch,' that is, on a goldfield, so that he is a 'legitimate miner' in every sense of the word, smiles appreciatively. We thankfully resume the saddle, and bid farewell to the 'Giant's Den.' 'It may be for years; it may be for ever.'

SPORT IN AUSTRALIA

Very early in a land peopled by the roving Englishman did sport of one kind or another begin to put forth those shoots which have since so grown and burgeoned. For some years there must have been so few horses, that racing contests were difficult if not impossible. The first cattle were herded without horses, some of the pedestrian stockmen acquiring thereby extraordinary speed of foot. It was customary for early Australians to make longish journeys on foot, and legends are yet rife in colonial families as to the distances performed then by the seniors—tales which strike with astonishment their descendants, who rarely walk, much less run.

We doubt not, however, that as soon as the colts and fillies began to grow up, their young riders, with or without leave, commenced to ascertain their relative speed.

Parramatta has, it is said, the honour of holding the first race meeting in 1810, the example being followed by the officers of the 73rd Regiment, then in Sydney, who utilised the reserve now known as Hyde Park for the purpose. From that time annual races commenced to be held there. The country towns, as they arose, were only too eager to follow the example of the metropolis. Favourites of the turf acquired fame which was trumpeted abroad through the restricted sporting circles of the day.

Sir John Jamison's Bennelong—named after a well-known aboriginal—was one of the early racing celebrities. He ran against Mr. Lawson's Spring Gun in 1829 for a heavy wager as they went then; and the old-world system of heats finishing up Spring Gun, he won easily. He carried off the principal turf events in Parramatta in 1832. In the same year Mr. H. Bayley's imported colt, Whisker, won the great races at the Hawkesbury meeting. Trotting was not entirely overlooked. It appears that a Mr. Potter's horse trotted twelve miles within the hour for a bet of £30, winning by fifteen seconds.

In May 1834 the Sydney Subscription Races were held on the New Course, Botany Road, for the first time. This course was new as compared with Hyde Park, but came to be called 'the old Sandy Course,' in relation to Homebush, the next established convincing-ground. At this meeting, Mr. C. Smith's Chester, a son of Bay Camerton, won the Cup; Whisker the Ladies' Purse. This grand horse won the Town Plate of £50; also the Ladies' Purse, £25, again beating Chester. Whisker, for whom £1400 had been offered three days previously, died within the week. I was present at that same old Sandy Course in the autumn of 1835, when Chester beat his half-brother Traveller—the latter fated to belong to my old friend and neighbour, Charles Macknight, at Dunmore, Victoria, in years to come. The well-known Emigrant mare, Lady Godiva, ran at the same meeting, and won her race for the Ladies' Purse, containing the modest sum of £30. The Town Plate was £50.

The celebrated horse Jorrocks, 'clarum et venerabile nomen' in turf annals, belonged to that period. A son of Whisker from Lady Emily (imported), he inherited some of the best racing-blood in the world; the dry air and nutritive pasturage of his native land did the rest. A horse of astonishing speed, stoutness, and courage, his record covers a longer list of victories than that of any other Australian racehorse. In those days of three-mile heats, he might not win the first, but rarely lost the succeeding ones. It used to be said that when the 'native' lads began to cheer, Jorrocks seemed to comprehend the situation, and would win on the post or die in the attempt. I saw him once, a retired veteran, and can never forget his shape, almost symmetrically perfect. A long forehand, with light, game head and full eye, grand sloping shoulders, cask-like back-rib, muscular quarter and Arab croupe, legs like iron, as indeed they needed to have been; a long, low horse, scarcely exceeding fifteen hands, I should say, in height—such was Jorrocks.

Intercolonial races began in 1849. Without railways there was a difficulty in transporting horses; but it was overcome. Petrel, the property of Mr. Colin Campbell, a popular Victorian squatter, ran a great race on the Melbourne Course with Mr. Austin's Bessie Bedlam, a beautiful daughter of Cornborough.

Dark brown, with tan muzzle.

Gordon's description might have been written for her. She was, to my thinking, the handsomest mare ever stripped on an Australian course. Petrel won, and Mr. Campbell gave a ball at the Prince of Wales' Hotel in Melbourne on the strength of his winnings, at which I was a guest—and a very good ball it was. The same year saw Emerald and Tally-ho (from New South Wales), Coronet and Hollyoake (of Tasmania), beaten by the Victorian horse Bunyip, a big powerful bay. He won the Town Plate, Publicans' Purse, and Ladies' Purse at the same meeting; and starting for fourteen principal races that season, won them all—a truly phenomenal animal.

By this time the gold 'boom of booms' had occurred. There were no more £50 Town Plates. In 1856 Alice Hawthorn won £1000 for Mr. Chirnside, beating Mr. Warby's Cardinal Wiseman; in her turn losing the three-mile race with Veno—an intercolonial duel—for £2000. In 1859 I saw Flying Buck win the Champion Melbourne Sweepstakes for £1000, eighteen starters, and may have heard the late Mr. Goldsborough offer a thousand to thirty against him after the start, and Roger Kelsall call out 'taken.'

The pageant of Flemington on Cup day was yet a visionary forecast. Mr. Bagot had not appeared above the horizon. First King, Briseis, Archer, and Glencoe—much less Carbine and Trenton—were in the dimmest futurity. I was to see Adam Lindsay Gordon win the steeplechase of '69 upon Viking, with Babbler half a length behind. Glencoe the same year bore the coveted Cup trophy to New South Wales.

What a wondrous change had taken place in a few short years between the primitive racing and rude surroundings of the old Botany Course and the shaven lawns, the flower-beds, the asphalt walks, the immense grand-stands, the order, comfort, and perfect organisation of Randwick and Flemington—exceeding indeed, in these respects, the race-courses of the old country! What a difference in the size and quality of the fields of running horses, in the amount of money wagered, in the multitude that attends, in the facilities of rail and road by which the tens of thousands of spectators are safely, comfortably disposed of in transit!

In these and other astounding developments of the era we cannot but mark the transition stage from a colony to a nation, from a collection of humble towns and hamlets to a cluster of cities commencing to take rank with the world's important centres. An Anglo-Saxon dominion unmatched, for the period of its existence, in wealth and culture, population and trade, in progress in all that constitutes true, steadfast, abiding civilisation.

With respect to sport other than horse-racing, the men who had left 'Merrie England' so far away across the Southern main, conscious that in many cases they had looked their last upon that earthly paradise of the angler, the huntsman, the fowler, and the deer-stalker, began to cast about for substitutes and compromises. Hares and rabbits there were none (did we catch a cheer, or was it a groan?); but the active marsupials which then overspread the land afforded reasonable coursing, and led to the formation of a breed of greyhounds, stronger, fiercer, in some instances hardly less fleet, than those of the old country. Reynard was still absent, but Brer Dingo was fast across the open, and a good stayer, while his insatiable appetite for mutton and poultry rendered him beyond a doubt the fox's natural successor. Even as a 'bagman' he was fairly serviceable.

Thus at an early date in Tasmania, a land of farms and small enclosures, and later on in Sydney, the old-world rural recreation, with pinks and tops, horn and hound, huntsman and whipper-in, 'accoutred proper,' was welcomed and supported. In Victoria there are now home-grown foxes in abundance, with hares, and, alas, rabbits in still greater proportion for them to subsist upon; while as to the fields, no straighter goers are to be found in Christendom—_moi qui parle_—than our young Australians, men and maidens, married or single—let the stiff three-railers of Petersham and Ballarat, Geelong and Rooty-hill testify; no better horses—fast, well-bred, clever, and up to weight. It seems hard that distance, expense, and long voyage should stand in the way of members of Australian hunt clubs trying their own and their steeds' mettle in 'the Shires.'

Now for the gun. Wild-fowling has obtained always on the inland lakes and rivers, on marsh and lagoons, with quail and snipe, more or less, still extant; yet it must be confessed that it has chiefly partaken of the nature of 'pot-hunting.' In marshy localities snipe are abundant in the season—I have known a bag made of twenty-five couple in Squattlesea Mere in old days; but the quail, the brown variety of which more nearly resembles the partridge, has a way of disappearing from haunts too much disturbed. Unlike the partridge, it will not return to the same cornfields year after year. The native pheasant is a shy bird, for the most part inhabiting the thickets of the interior and the forests of the main range—localities where sport can hardly be carried out under proper conditions. The wild turkey is a grand bird, both as to size and flavour, but wary and a dweller on plains. He is only to be approached by stratagem.

In New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania, the partridge and pheasant, though often imported—my old friend Mr. Yaldwyn brought out both to his station near Macedon early in the 'forties'—have never thriven in the bush proper. Edible seeds and berries are scarce, while natural enemies are plentiful. In New Zealand, a virgin Britannia of the South, the converse obtains. There are in that priceless possession, obtained by pluck and luck (before we got into the habit of advertising for the colonisation of our territory by foreigners), no eagles, no crows, no dingoes or dasyures. Partridges or pheasants turned loose in the woods of the North Island multiply apace, and a tremendous bag of the former was made to my knowledge by a Sydney proprietor on a visit there, walking in breast-high fern, but a few years since. As to introduced game, a herd of red deer, led by a 'stag of ten,' may be seen on the grassy slopes of Laverton, within easy reach of Melbourne, and near enough for an occasional hunt, while fallow deer are plentiful, both there and in other Australian localities. Among the farms they have grown to be somewhat of a nuisance indeed; hence a trifle of justifiable poaching no doubt occasionally takes place. In a general way no great harm has been done by the introduction of European game. Hares have increased amazingly, while greyhounds of stainless pedigree, with coursing matches to suit all comers, are plentiful in every country district.

But the 'werry important and particlar' exception to this comfortable doctrine has been the rabbit. Alack! and alack! What evil genius, hostile to the good South Land, prompted the importation of that fiend in a fur-jacket? 'Brer Rabbit' has amply revenged upon us the sufferings of his kind in bygone ages, and left a balance yet unpaid. What have we spent on him? What tens of thousands of pounds sterling are yet to be disbursed by suffering squatters, o'erburdened tax-payers, even by the humble 'retrenched' civil servant, against whom appears to be the hand of every man in the hour of financial need!

But the subject is too painful. Far removed from any description of sport. Sport? Ha! ha! Death, indeed, is the closer designation. However we may have been deceived as to certain results 'on this behalf,' let us not forget that our enemy is, like most of his congeners, excellent eating—good alike on the table of the poor man and the rich. In time, as population advances and smaller enclosures become necessary, his doom of extermination will be fulfilled, while the more harmless ministers of sport will be protected and encouraged.

About cricket it seems unnecessary to dilate. It has been taught sedulously to the Australian boy, by precept and example. No denominational bias has hindered _that_ lesson being learned thoroughly—a fair argument, by the way, supposing the national reputation and existence to depend solely upon cricket, in favour of the secular system. How all our boys love it! Did I not see a youngster, of say seven or eight, yesterday, leading two small brothers, with one cry of 'Cricket match!' dash up to the engraving of the Gentlemen of England and 'Our Boys' in London, on the cricket-ground, now on view in a bookseller's window in George Street? How they gloated over it!

Many a good match have I seen in the old Hyde Park, when the Sydney College boys had a right of occupation there for a special purpose. His Honour Judge Forbes, then a crack bowler at one wicket, with Mr. William Roberts senior performing the part of the historic veteran of Dingley Dell with the bat. William Still looking out for a catch, George Hill or Geoffrey Eager, or Moule or Hovenden Hely, alert at cover-point or slip, mid-wicket or long-stop.

Ah me! those days have gone, and how many of those who then ran and shouted in all the glee of youthful spirits and health! Those who remain are growing old, if not in the 'serious and yellow' stage, and the young ones are coming on, doubtless to fill their places, 'in arms, in arts, in song.' When Hugh Hamon Massie made that 206 score for the Australian team against Oxford, our British cousins were probably of the same opinion. His triumph on that occasion was by no means a solitary one, and successive teams have demonstrated that in Australians our kin beyond sea will always find foemen worthy of their steel. Long may the friendly rivalry last; and in the deadlier contests to come—as surely they _must_ come—may they always stand, like Highlanders, 'shouther to shouther.'[3]

Footnote 3:

Written in 1885. A prophecy fulfilled in February 1900.

Next to the outside of a horse—even, perhaps, as regards the coast towns, before that instinctively natural position—your true Australian is most at home in a boat. Those who watch the appearance of Sydney Harbour on a holiday must come to the conclusion that as a nursery for seamen it is excelled by few sea-boards in the world. Gay is the sea-lake with every kind of sailing craft, from the fifty-ton yacht, brand new and not launched under a cost of £2000 or £3000, to the canvas dingy flying along, bows under, with a big sail, and the youthful crew perched like seagulls on the weather gunwale. When a capsize occurs, which with these craft is a matter 'quite frequent,' they dive like a brood of wild-ducks, as they right their frail craft, and are soon bowling along as reckless as ever.

With such aquatic habits, small wonder if we have bred or trained the men who have beaten with the sculls not only old England but the world—ay, the world!—at this particular sport. Not only is it now demonstrated that we possess equal skill in all the manlier exercises—the boast of the island Briton, and at which he was long held to be unrivalled—but that in strength, stature, and the desperate courage which prolongs the contest to the last dangerous degree of exhaustion and afterwards, our men, Australian-born or reared, are equal to the best Briton that ever trod a plank, or to the best transatlantic colonist, himself superior in that special section of sport to his British kinsmen.

All Sydney boys, of whatever degree, take naturally to the boat. And when I saw a young friend but the other day, in a Masaniello rig, expand his broad chest and glide into stroke with one stretch of his bronzed muscular arms, I hummed instinctively as I watched the retreating skiff, 'Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves.'

The 'incomplete angler' necessarily commenced by deep-line fishing in Botany Bay, where he discovered the highly-edible schnapper, that moderately-boned fish of comfortable size and toothsome flavour. To him all honour therefor. Also the rock and other cod-fish, whiting, bream, mullet, trumpeter, flounder, sole, and many others (not forgetting yellow-tail for bait)—all these for sea-fish are not to be surpassed. It was some years before the lordly Murray Cod was handled with the help of rod and line, by reason of the Murray, our Australian Mississippi, not being then discovered.

Since then we have made piscatorial advance, and doubtless shall make more. If we have not finally settled the question as to the acclimatisation of _Salmo ferox_ in Tasmania, we have the best of all evidences of the existence of trout of exceptional size in Australian waters. Fly-fishing is still in its infancy, though the _thymallus_ of the Yarra Falls rises eagerly, and gives good sport. Trout and herring furnish many an hour's enjoyment to the disciple of Izaak Walton in Tasmania. Huge lake-trout are to be found in the erstwhile eel-tenanted deeps of New Zealand. A salmo-appearing fish, weight 27 lbs., was killed in Tasmania in 1893.

In time—only give us time—and rest assured, my Australian brethren and English kinsfolk, that we shall have such sport in the South Land generally as shall do no discredit to our race—the best all-round sportsmen in the world. And so, fully aware that this is a bald and incomplete sketch of the rise and progress of sport in Australia, but promising to do better (if spared) at the next Centennial, and wishing us all good fun and fortune at this, one Australian hunter's horn must cease 'blowing' and sound the recall.

OLD STOCK-RIDERS

So poor old 'Flash Jack' is dead, says the _Port Fairy Gazette_, drowned in a creek—a stock-rider's not unfitting end. We remember him, young, _debonair_, tall, sinewy and active, with longish, curling brown locks of which he was rather proud, as also of the cabbage-tree hat of the period. But every one seems to be old nowadays except a crowd of juniors so painfully young that one wonders they are permitted to take life seriously. His sobriquet was acquired more through the ebullitions of a harmless vanity than from any of the offensive qualities which the well-worn colonial adjective is wont to imply. There was a certain amount of 'blow' about Jack, doubtless, but never in undue proportion to his attainments, which, as a stock-rider, horse-breaker, and mailman, were admitted to be creditable. His introduction to the Port Fairy district was through the Messrs. Carmichael, while before taking service with them he had reached Melbourne from England in the _Eagle_, Captain Buckley—both ship and commander favourably known in the early days.

A rumour prevailed that Jack was the scion of a good family; had been sent to sea as a midshipman, possibly to cure the malady of 'wildness,' for which a voyage to or residence in Australia is (erroneously) held to be a specific. It did not answer in Jack's case, for he quitted his ship, 'taking to the bush' (in a restricted sense), and never afterwards abandoning it. Uncommunicative about such matters generally, he threw out hints from time to time that he was not in the position for which his early associations had prepared him.

'My name's not Crickmere, Mas'r Rolf,' he said to me once, as we were riding through the Eumeralla marshes. (He always adopted the fiction that he was an old retainer of our family.) '_Far from it._' But after this dark saying he relapsed into his usual reserve on the subject and enlightened me no further. One trait of character which was in keeping with his presumed social past he was well known to possess.

'You seem mighty independent, my man,' said an employer to him on one occasion.

'Yes,' replied Jack proudly, 'and I can uphold it.'

He was in my service before and after 'the gold' as stock-rider, horse-breaker, and road-hand, both at Port Fairy and Lake Boga. Not the man to save his wages; unlike many of his contemporaries, who are now men of substance, Jack varied but little in his non-possession of the world's goods. But there were many homesteads in his old district where he was always sure of a welcome, a glass of grog, and a week's lodgings, so that when out of employment he was never in any great straits.

With one influential class of the community he was especially acceptable, and a favourite to the last. He had a natural 'Hans the boatman' faculty for amusing children, whom he delighted by making miniature stockwhips and other bush requisites, while they never tired of listening to his wondrous tales of flood and field.

In the matter of stockwhip-making he was a second 'Nangus Jack,' and, moreover, an extraordinary performer with that weapon in the saddle. I have seen him cantering along with a steady stock-horse, standing in the saddle and cracking a brace of stockwhips, one in either hand—a feat which any young gentleman is free to try if he wishes to ascertain if it be easy or otherwise. He had been through the rougher experiences of bush life, and mentioned casually, once, having been speared by blacks in Gippsland. The company being disposed to treat the statement as 'Jack's yarn,' he gave ocular proof by exhibiting a cicatrice, far from trifling in dimensions, where the jagged spear-point had been cut out above his hip-bone.

He was a reliable horse-breaker, for several reasons. Being long and loose of frame, he rode a good deal 'all over his horse'—unlike some breakers, who are so still and noiseless in their method that any unwonted cheerfulness of manner is apt to startle their pupils into 'propping,' But as Jack on his excursions was always singing, shouting, and whistling; leaning half out of his saddle to greet a friend, or leaving his colts tied up at a public-house; by the time he had done with them they were safe for anybody, and would be difficult to alarm or astonish on account of these varied experiences.

As a road-hand Jack was quite in his element, and a decided acquisition to any overlanding party. He would have been invaluable in South Africa. Always in good humour, he kept every one alive during the monotonous days of driving and dreary nights of watching with his songs and stories, his 'quips and quiddities.' He was also of signal service to the commissariat, making frequent _reconnaissances_ where the country was inhabited, and returning with new-laid eggs, butter, and other delicacies, out of which he had wheedled the farmers' wives or daughters.

At one time or other Jack had been in the employment of all the principal stockholders in the Port Fairy district, including Mr. John Cox of Werongurt, the Messrs. Rutledge, Campbell, and Macknight, Kennedy, Carmichael, and others. His never staying very long in one place was less due to any fault of his own than to an inherent restlessness and love of change. A born roamer, with strong Bohemian proclivities, Jack had wandered over a considerable portion of the colony. With commendable taste he latterly elected to make Western Victoria his habitual residence; and, strangely enough, he was fated to finish a roving life as nearly as possible at the place where he first took service, more than forty years since, on his first arrival in the district.

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