Chapter III (4)

When the new shepherd had been following his flock for a few days, Mr. Robinson, while looking out from the verandah of his house over the plains, observed a strange object approaching at some distance. He said to himself, "That is not a horseman, nor an emu, nor a native companion, nor a swagman, nor a kangaroo." He could not make it out; so he fetched his binocular, and then perceived that it was a human being, stark naked. His first impression was that some unfortunate traveller had lost his way in the wide wilderness, or a station hand had gone mad with drink, or that a sundowner had become insane with hunger, thirst, and despair.

He took a blanket and went to meet the man, in order that he might cover him decently before he arrived too near the house. It was Hyde, the new shepherd, who said he had been stripped by the blacks.

From information afterwards elicited by Robinson it appeared that the blacks had approached Hyde in silence while his back was turned to them. The sight of them gave a sudden shock to his system. He was totally unprepared for such an emergency. If he had had time to recall to memory some historical examples, he might have summoned up his sinking courage, and have done a deed worthy of record. There was David, the youthful shepherd of Israel, who slew a lion and a bear, and killed Goliath, the gigantic champion of the Philistines. There were the Shepherd Kings, who ruled the land of Egypt. there was one-eyed Polyphemus, moving among his flocks on the mountain tops of Sicily; a monster, dreadful, vast, and hideous; able to roast and eat these three blackfellows at one meal. And nearer our own time was the youth whose immortal speech begins, "My name is Norval; on the Grampian Hills my father fed his flocks." Our shepherd had a stick in his hand and a collie dog at his command. Now was the time for him to display "London Assurance" to some purpose; and now was the time for the example of the ever-victorious Duke to work a miracle of valour. But the crisis had come on too quickly, and there was no time to pump up bravery from the deep well of history. The unearthly ugliness of the savages, their thick lips, prominent cheek bones, scowling and overhanging brows, broad snub noses, matted black hair, and above all the keen, steady, and ferocious scrutiny of their deep-set eyes, extinguished the last spark of courage in the heart of Hyde. He did not look fierce and defiant any more. He felt inclined to be very civil, so he smiled a sickly smile and tried to say something, but his chin wobbled, and his tongue would not move.

The blacks came nearer, and one of them said, "Gib fig tobacker, mate?" Here was a gleam of hope, a chance of postponing his final doom. When a foe cannot be conquered, it is lawful to pay him to be merciful; to give him an indemnity for his trouble in not kicking you. The shepherd instantly pulled out his tobacco, his pipe, his tobacco-knife, and matches, and handed them over. A second blackfellow, seeing him so ready to give, took the loan of his tin billy, with some tea and sugar in it, and some boiled mutton and damper. These children of the plains now saw that they had come upon a mine of wealth, and they worked it down to the bed rock. One after another, and with the willing help of the owner, they took possession of his hat, coat, shirt, boots, socks, trousers, and drawers, until the Hyde was completely bare, as naked, and, it is to be hoped, as innocent, as a new-born babe. His vanity, which was the major part of his personality, had vanished with his garments, and the remnant left of body and soul was very insignificant.

Having now delivered up everything but his life, he had some hope that his enemies might at least spare him that. They were jabbering to one another at a great rate, trying on, putting off, and exchanging first one article and then another of the spoils they had won. They did not appear to think that the new chum was worth looking after any longer. So he began slinking away slowly towards his flock of sheep, trying to look as if nothing in particular was the matter; but he soon turned in the direction of the home station. He tried to run, and for a short time fear winged his feet; but the ground was hard and rough, and his feet were tender; and though he believed that death and three devils were behind him, he could go but slowly. A solitary eaglehawk sat on the top branch of a dead gum-tree, watching him with evil eyes; a chorus of laughing jackasses cackled after him in derision from a grove of young timber; a magpie, the joy of the morning, and most mirthful of birds, whistled for him sweet notes of hope and good cheer; then a number of carrion crows beheld him, and approached with their long-drawn, ill-omened "croank, croank," the most dismal note ever uttered by any living thing. They murder sick sheep, and pick out the eyes of stray lambs. They made short straggling flights, alighting on the ground in front of the miserable man, inspecting his condition, and calculating how soon he would be ready to be eaten. They are impatient gluttons, and often begin tearing their prey before it is dead.

Mr. Robinson clothed the naked, and then mounted his horse and went for the blacks. In a short time he returned with them to the station, and made them disgorge the stolen property, all but the tea, sugar, mutton, and damper, which were not returnable. He gave them some stirring advice with his stockwhip, and ordered them to start for a warmer climate. He then directed Hyde to return to his sheep, and not let those blank blacks humbug him out of clothes any more. But nothing would induce the shepherd to remain another day; he forswore pastoral pursuits for the rest of his life. His courage had been tried and found wanting; he had been covered--or, rather, uncovered--with disgrace; and his dignity--at least in Riverina --was gone for ever. In other scenes, and under happier auspices, he might recover it, but on Robinson's station he would be subjected to the derision of the station hands as long as he stayed.

How he lived for some time afterwards is unknown; but in 1853 he was a policeman at Bendigo diggings. At that time any man able to carry a carbine was admitted into the force without question. It was then the refuge of the penniless, of broken-down vagabonds, and unlucky diggers. Lords and lags were equally welcomed without characters or references from their former employers, the Masters' and Servants' Act having become a dead letter. Hyde entered the Government service, and had the good sense to stay there. His military bearing and noble mien proclaimed him fit to be a leader of men, and soon secured his promotion. He was made a sergeant, and in a few years was transferred to the Western District, far away, as he thought, from the scene of his early adventure.

He lived for several years after meeting with and cutting his old employer, Robinson, and died at last of dyspepsia and peppermints, the disease and the remedy combined.

WHITE SLAVES.

Many men who had been prisoners of the Crown, or seamen, lived on the islands in Bass' Straits, as well as on islands in the Pacific Ocean, fishing, sealing, or hunting, and sometimes cultivating patches of ground. The freedom of this kind of life was pleasing to those who had spent years under restraint in ships, in gaols, in chain-gangs, or as slaves to settlers in the bush, for the lot of the assigned servant was often worse than that of a slave, as he had to give his labour for nothing but food and clothing, and was liable to be flogged on any charge of disobedience, insolence, or insubordination which his master might choose to bring against him. Moreover, the black slave might be sold for cash, for five hundred to a thousand dollars, according to the quality of the article and the state of the market, so that it was for the enlightened self-interest of the owner to keep him in saleable condition. But the white slave was unsaleable, and his life of no account. When he died another could be obtained for nothing from the cargo of the next convict ship.

Some masters treated their men well according to their deserts; but with regard to others, the exercise of despotic authority drew forth all the evil passions of their souls, and made them callous to the sufferings of their servants.

The daily fear of the lash produced in the prisoners a peculiar expression of countenance, and a cowed and slinking gait, which I have never seen in any other men, white or black. And that gait and expression, like that of a dog crouching at the heels of a cruel master in fear of the whip, remained still after the prisoners had served the time of their sentences, and had recovered their freedom. They never smiled, and could never regain the feelings and bearing of free men; they appeared to feel on their faces the brand of Cain, by which they were known to all men, and the scars left on their backs by the cruel lash could never be smoothed away. Whenever they met, even on a lonely bush track, a man who, by his appearance might be a magistrate or a Government officer, they raised a hand to the forehead in a humble salute by mere force of habit. There were some, it is true, whose spirits were never completely broken--who fought against fate to the last, and became bushrangers or murderers; but sooner or later they were shot, or they were arrested and hanged. The gallows-tree on the virgin soil of Australia flourished and bore fruit in abundance.

The trial of a convict charged with disobedience or insubordination was of summary jurisdiction. Joe Kermode, a teamster, chanced to be present at one of these trials. It was about ten o'clock in the morning when he saw near a house on the roadside a little knot of men at an open window. He halted his team to see what was the matter, and found that a police magistrate, sitting inside a room, was holding a Court of Petty Sessions at the window. It was an open court, to which the public were admitted according to law; a very open court, the roof of which was blue--the blue sky of a summer's morning. A witness was giving evidence against an assigned servant, charged with some offence against his master. His majesty, the magistrate, yawned--this kind of thing was tiresome. Presently a lady came into the room, walked to the open window, clasped her hands together, and laid them affectionately on the shoulder of the court. After listening for a few moments to the evidence she became impatient, and said, "Oh, William, give him three dozen and come to breakfast." So William gave the man three dozen and went to breakfast--with a good conscience; having performed the ordinary duty of the day extraordinarily well, he was on the high road to perfection.

The sentence of the court was carried out by a scourger, sometimes called flagellator, or flogger. The office of scourger was usually held by a convict; it meant promotion in the Government service, and although there was some danger connected with it, there was always a sufficient number of candidates to fill vacancies. In New South Wales the number of officers in the cat-o'-nine tails department was about thirty. The danger attached to the office consisted in the certainty of the scourger being murdered by the scourgee, if ever the opportunity was given.

Joe Kermode had once been a hutkeeper on a station. The hut was erected about forty yards from the stockyard, to which the sheep were brought every evening, to protect them from attack by dingoes or blackfellows. If the dingoes and blackfellows had been content with one sheep at a time to allay the pangs of hunger, they could not have been blamed very much; but after killing one they went on killing as many more as they could, and thus wasted much mutton to gratify their thirst for blood.

Joe and the shepherd were each provided with a musket and bayonet for self-defence.

The hut was built of slabs, and was divided by a partition into two rooms, and Joe always kept his musket ready loaded, night and day, just inside the doorway of the inner room. Two or three blacks would sometimes call, and ask for flour, sugar, tobacco, or a firestick. If they attempted to come inside the hut, Joe ordered them off, backing at the same time towards the inner door, and he always kept a sharp look-out for any movement they made; for they were very treacherous, and he knew they would take any chance they could get to kill him, for the sake of stealing the flour, sugar, and tobacco. Two of them once came inside the hut and refused to go out, until Joe seized his musket, and tickled them in the rear with his bayonet, under the "move on" clause in the Police Offences Statute.

Early one morning there was a noise as of some disturbance in the stockyard, and Joe, on opening the door of his hut, saw several blacks spearing the sheep. He seized his musket and shouted, warning them to go away. One of them, who was sitting on the top rail with his back towards the hut, seemed to think that he was out of range of the musket, for he made most unseemly gestures, and yelled back at Joe in a defiant and contemptuous manner. Joe's gun was charged with shot, and he fired and hit his mark, for the blackfellow dropped suddenly from the top rail, and ran away, putting his hands behind him, and trying to pick out the pellets.

One day a white stockman came galloping on his horse up to the door of the hut, his face, hands, shirt and trousers being smeared and saturated with blood. Joe took him inside the hut, and found that he had two severe wounds on the left shoulder. After the bleeding had been stanched and the wounds bandaged, the stranger related that as he was riding he met a blackfellow carrying a fire-stick. He thought it was a good opportunity of lighting his pipe, lucifer matches being then unknown in the bush; so he dismounted, took out his knife, and began cutting tobacco. The blackfellow asked for a fig of tobacco, and, after filling his pipe, the stockman gave him the remainder of the fig he had been cutting, and held out his hand for the firestick. The blackfellow seemed disappointed; very likely expecting to receive a whole fig of tobacco--and, instead of handing him the firestick he threw it on the ground. At the first moment the stockman did not suspect any treachery, as he had seen no weapon in possession of the blackfellow. He stooped to pick up the firestick; but just as he was touching it, he saw the black man's feet moving nearer, and becoming suddenly suspicious, he quickly moved his head to one side and stood upright. At the same instant he received a blow from a tomahawk on his left shoulder. This blow, intended for his head, was followed by another, which inflicted a second wound; but the stockman succeeded in grasping the wrist of his enemy. Then began a wrestling match between the two men, the stakes two lives, no umpire, no timekeeper, no backers, and no bets. The only spectator was the horse, whose bridle was hanging on the ground. But he seemed to take no interest in the struggle, and continued nibbling the grass until it was over.

The black man, who had now dropped his rug, was as agile and nimble as a beast of prey, and exerted all his skill and strength to free his hand. But the white man felt that to loose his hold would be to lose his life, and he held on to his grip of the blackfellow's wrist with desperate resolution. The tomahawk fell to the ground, but just then neither of the men could spare a hand to pick it up. At length, by superior strength, the stockman brought his enemy to the ground. He then grasped the thick, matted hair with one hand, and thus holding the black's head close to the ground, he reached with the other hand for the tomahawk, and with one fierce blow buried the blade in the savage's brain. Even then he did not feel quite sure of his safety. He had an idea that it was very difficult to kill blackfellows outright, that theywere like American 'possums, and were apt to come to life again after they had been killed, and ought to be dead. So to finish his work well, he hacked at the neck with the tomahawk until he had severed the head completely from the body; then taking the head by the hair, he threw it as far as he could to the other side of the track. By this time he began to feel faint from loss of blood, so he mounted his horse and galloped to Joe Kermode's hut.

When Joe had performed his duties of a good Samaritan to the stranger he mounted his horse, and rode to the field of battle. He found the headless body of the black man, the head at the other side of the track, the tomahawk, the piece of tobacco, the rug, and the firestick. Joe and the shepherd buried the body; the white man survived.

THE GOVERNMENT STROKE.

"The Government Stroke" is a term often used in the colonies, and indicates a lazy and inefficient manner of performing any kind of labour. It originated with the convicts. When a man is forced to work through fear of the lash, and receives no wages, it is quite natural and reasonable that he should exert himself as little as possible. If you were to reason with him, and urge him to work harder at, for instance, breaking road metal, in order that the public might have good roads to travel on, and show him what a great satisfaction it should be to know that his labours would confer a lasting benefit on his fellow creatures; that, though it might appear a little hard on him individually, he should raise his thoughts to a higher level, and labour for the good of humanity in general, he would very likely say, "Do you take me for a fool?" But if you gave him three dozen lashes for his laziness he will see, or at least feel, that your argument has some force in it. As a matter of fact men work for some present or future benefit for themselves. The saint who sells all he has to give to the poor, does so with the hope of obtaining a reward exceedingly great in the life to come. And even if there were no life to come, his present life is happier far than that of the man who grabs at all the wealth he can get until he drops into the grave. The man who works "all for love and nothing for reward" is a being incomprehensible to us ordinary mortals; he is an angel, and if ever he was a candidate for a seat in Parliament he was not elected. Even love--"which rules the court, the camp, the grove"--is given only with the hope of a return of love; for hopeless love is nothing but hopeless misery.

I once hired an old convict as gardener at five shillings a day. He began to work in the morning with a great show of diligence while I was looking on. But on my return home in the evening it was wonderful to find how little work he had contrived to get through during the day; so I began to watch him. His systematic way of doing nothing would have been very amusing if it cost nothing. He pressed his spade into the ground with his boot as slowly as possible, lifted the sod very gently, and turned it over. Then he straightened his back, looked at the ground to the right, then to the left, then in front of him, and then cast his eyes along the garden fence. Having satisfied himself that nothing particular was happening anywhere within view, he gazed awhile at the sod he had turned over, and then shaved the top off with his spade. Having straightened his back once more, he began a survey of the superficial area of the next sod, and at length proceeded to cut it in the same deliberate manner, performing the same succeeding ceremonies. If he saw me, or heard me approaching, he became at once very alert and diligent until I spoke to him, then he stopped work at once. It was quite impossible for him both to labour and to listen; nobody can do two things well at the same time. But his greatest relief was in talking; he would talk with anybody all day long if possible, and do nothing else; his wages, of course, still running on. There is very little talk worth paying for. I would rather give some of my best friends a fee to be silent, than pay for anything they have to tell me. My gardener was a most unprofitable servant; the only good I got out of him was a clear knowledge of what the Government stroke meant, and the knowledge was not worth the expense. He was in other respects harmless and useless, and, although he had been transported for stealing, I could never find that he stole anything from me. The disease of larceny seemed somehow to have been worked out of his system; though he used to describe with great pleasure how his misfortunes began by stealing wall-fruit when he was a boy; and although it was to him like the fruit

"Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe."

it was so sweet that, while telling me about it sixty years afterwards, he smiled and smacked his lips, renewing as it were the delight of its delicious taste.

He always avoided, as much as possible, the danger of dying of hard work, so he is living yet, and is eighty-six years old. Whenever I see him he gives me his blessing, and says he never worked for any man he liked so well. A great philosopher says, in order to be happy it is necessary to be beloved, but in order to be beloved we must know how to please, and we can only please by ministering to the happiness of others. I ministered to the old convict's happiness by letting him work so lazily, and so I was beloved and happy.

He had formerly been an assigned servant to Mr. Gellibrand, Attorney-General of Tasmania, before that gentleman went with Mr. Hesse on that voyage to Australia Felix from which he never returned. Some portions of a skeleton were found on the banks of a river, which were supposed to belong to the lost explorer, and that river, and Mount Gellibrand, on which he and Hesse parted company, were named after him.

There was a blackfellow living for many years afterwards in the Colac district who was said to have killed and eaten the lost white man; the first settlers therefore call him Gellibrand, as they considered he had made out a good claim to the name by devouring the flesh. This blackfellow's face was made up of hollows and protuberances ugly beyond all aboriginal ugliness. I was present at an interview between him and senior-constable Hooley, who nearly rivalled the savage in lack of beauty. Hooley had been a soldier in the Fifth Fusiliers, and had been convicted of the crime of manslaughter, having killed a coloured man near Port Louis, in the Mauritius. He was sentenced to penal servitude for the offence, and had passed two years of his time in Tasmania. This incident had produced in his mind an interest in blackfellows generally, and on seeing Gellibrand outside the Colac courthouse, he walked up to him, and looked him steadily in the face, without saying a word or moving a muscle of his countenance. I never saw a more lovely pair. The black fellow returned the gaze unflinchingly, his deep-set eyes fixed fiercely on those of the Irishman, his nostrils dilated, and his frowning forehead wrinkled and hard, as if cast in iron. The two men looked like two wild beasts preparing for a deadly fight. At length, Hooley moved his face nearer to that of the savage, until their noses almost met, and between his teeth he slowly ejaculated: "You eat white man? You eat me? Eh?" Then the deep frown on Gellibrand's face began slowly to relax, his thick lips parted by degrees, and displayed, ready for business, his sharp and shining teeth, white as snow and hard as steel. A smile, which might be likened to that of a humorous tiger, spread over his spacious features, and so the interview ended without a fight. I was very much disappointed, as I hoped the two man-slayers were going to eat each other for the public good, and I was ready to back both of them without fear, favour, or affection.

There is no doubt that the blacks ate human flesh, not as an article of regular diet, but occasionally, when the fortune of war, or accident, favoured them with a supply. When Mr. Hugh Murray set out from Geelong to look for country to the westward, he took with him several natives belonging to the Barrabool tribe. When they arrived near Lake Colac they found the banks of the Barongarook Creek covered with scrub, and on approaching the spot where the bridge now spans the watercourse, they saw a blackfellow with his lubra and a little boy, running towards the scrub. The Barrabool blacks gave chase, and the little boy was caught by one of them before he could find shelter, and was instantly killed with a club. That night the picaninny was roasted at the camp fire, and eaten.

And yet these blacks had human feelings and affections. I once saw a tribe travelling from one part of the district to another in search of food, as was their custom. One of the men was dying of consumption, and was too weak to follow the rest. He looked like a living skeleton, but he was not left behind to die. He was sitting on the shoulders of his brother, his hands grasping for support the hair on the head, and his wasted legs dangling in front of the other's ribs. These people were sometimes hunted as if they were wolves, but two brother wolves would not have been so kind to each other.

Before the white men came the blacks never buried their dead; they had no spades and could not dig graves. Sometimes their dead were dropped into the hollow trunks of trees, and sometimes they were burned. There was once a knoll on the banks of the Barongarook Creek, below the court-house, the soil of which looked black and rich. When I was trenching the ground near my house for vines and fruit trees, making another garden of paradise in lieu of the one I had lost, I obtained cart loads of bones from the slaughter yards and other places, and placed them in trenches; and in order to fertilize one corner of the garden, I spread over it several loads of the rich-looking black loam taken from the knoll near the creek. After a few years the vines and trees yielded great quantities of grapes and fruit, and I made wine from my vineyard. But the land on which I had spread the black loam was almost barren, and yet I had seen fragments of bones mixed with it, and amongst them a lower jaw with perfect teeth, most likely the jaw of a young lubra. On mentioning the circumstance to one of the early settlers, he said my loam had been taken from the spot on which the blacks used to burn their dead. Soon after he arrived at Colac he saw there a solitary blackfellow crouching before a fire in which bones were visible. So, pointing to them, he asked what was in the fire, and the blackfellow replied with one word "lubra." He was consuming the remains of his dead wife, and large tears were coursing down his cheeks. Day and night he sat there until the bones had been nearly all burned and covered with ashes. This accounted for the fragments of bones in my black loam; why it was not fertile, I know, but I don't know how to express the reason well.

While the trenching of my vineyard was going on, Billy Nicholls looked over the fence, and gave his opinion about it. He held his pipe between his thumb and forefinger, and stopped smoking in stupid astonishment. He said--"That ground is ruined, never will grow nothing no more; all the good soil is buried; nothing but gravel and stuff on top; born fool."

Old Billy was a bullock driver, my neighbour and enemy, and lived, with his numerous progeny, in a hut in the paddock next to mine. In the rainy seasons the water flowed through my ground on to his, and he had dug a drain which led the water past his hut, instead of allowing it to go by the natural fall across his paddock. The floods washed his drain into a deep gully near his hut, which was sometimes nearly surrounded with the roaring waters. He then tried to dam the water back on to my ground, but I made a gap in his dam with a long-handled shovel, and let the flood go through. Nature and the shovel were too much for Billy. He came out of his hut, and stood watching the torrent, holding his dirty old pipe a few inches from his mouth, and uttered a loud soliloquy:--"Here I am--on a miserable island--fenced in with water--going to be washed away --by that Lord Donahoo, son of a barber's clerk--wants to drown me and my kids--don't he--I'll break his head wi' a paling--blowed if I don't." He then put his pipe in his mouth, and gazed in silence on the rushing waters.

I planted my ground with vines of fourteen different varieties, but, in a few years, finding that the climate was unsuitable for most of them, I reduced the number to about five. These yielded an unfailing abundance of grapes every year, and as there was no profitable market, I made wine. I pruned and disbudded the vines myself, and also crushed and pressed the grapes. The digging and hoeing of the ground cost about 10 pounds each year. When the wine had been in the casks about twelve months I bottled it; in two years more it was fit for consumption, and I was very proud of the article. But I cannot boast that I ever made much profit out of it--that is, in cash-- as I found that the public taste for wine required to be educated, and it took so long to do it that I had to drink most of the wine myself. The best testimony to its excellence is the fact that I am still alive.

The colonial taste for good liquor was spoiled from the very beginning, first by black strap and rum, condensed from the steam of hell, then by Old Tom and British brandy, fortified with tobacco-- this liquor was the nectar with which the ambrosial station hands were lambed down by the publicans--and in these latter days by colonial beer, the washiest drink a nation was ever drenched with. the origin of bad beer dates from the repeal of the sugar duty in England; before that time beer was brewed from malt and hops, and that we had "jolly good ale and old," and sour pie.

A great festival was impending at Colac, to consist of a regatta on the lake, the first we ever celebrated, and a picnic on its banks. All the people far and near invited themselves to the feast, from the most extensive of squatters to the oldest of old hands. The blackfellows were there, too--what was left of them. Billy Leura walked all the way from Camperdown, and on the day before the regatta came to my house with a couple of black ducks in his hand. Sissy, six years old, was present; she inspected the blackfellow and the ducks, and listened. Leura said he wanted to sell me the ducks, but not for money; he would take old clothes for them. He was wearing nothing but a shirt and trousers, both badly out of repair, and was anxious to adorn his person with gay attire on the morrow. So I traded off a pair of old cords and took the ducks.

Next day we had two guests, a Miss Sheppard, from Geelong, and another lady, and as my house was near the lake, we did our picnicking inside. We put on as much style as possible to suit the occasion, including, of course, my best native wine, and the two ducks roasted. Sissy sat at the table next to Miss Sheppard, and felt it her duty to lead the conversation in the best society style. She said:

"You see dose two ducks, Miss Sheppard?"

"Yes, dear; very fine ones."

"Well, papa bought 'em from a black man yesterday. De man said dey was black ducks, but dey was'nt black, dey was brown. De fedders are in de yard, and dey are brown fedders."

"Yes, I know, dear; they call them black ducks, but they are brown-- dark brown."

"Well, you see, de blackfellow want to sell de ducks to papa, but papa has no money, so he went into de house and bring out a pair of his old lowsers, and de blackfellow give him de ducks for de lowsers, and dems de ducks you see."

"Yes, dear; I see," said Miss Sheppard, blushing terribly.

We all blushed.

"You naughty girl," said mamma; "hold your tongue, or I'll send you to the kitchen."

"But mamma, you know its quite true," said Sissy. "Didn't I show you de black man just now, Miss Sheppard, when he was going to de lake? I said dere's de blackfellow, and he's got papa's lowsers on, didn't I now?"

The times seemed prosperous with us, but it was only a deceptive gleam of sunshine before the coming storm of adversity. I built an addition to my dwelling; and when it was completed I employed a paperhanger from London named Taylor, to beautify the old rooms. He was of a talkative disposition; when he had nobody else to listen he talked to himself, and when he was tired of that he began singing. The weather was hot, and the heat, together with his talking and singing, made him thirsty; so one day he complained to me that his work was very dry. I saw at once an opportunity of obtaining an independent and reliable judgment on the quality of my wine; so I went for a bottle, drew the cork, and offered him a tumblerful, telling him it was wine which I had made from my own grapes. As Taylor was a native of London, the greatest city in the world, he must have had a wide experience in many things, was certain to know the difference between good and bad liquor, and I was anxious to obtain a favourable verdict on my Australian product. He held up the glass to the light, and eyed the contents critically; then he tasted a small quantity, and paused awhile to feel the effect. He then took another taste, and remarked, "It's sourish." He put the tumbler to his mouth a third time, and emptied it quickly. Then he placed one hand on his stomach, said "Oh, my," and ran away to the water tap outside to rinse his mouth and get rid of the unpleasant flavour. His verdict was adverse, and very unflattering.

Next day, while I was inspecting his work, he gave me to understand that he felt dry again. I asked him what he would like, a drink of water or a cup of tea? He said, "Well, I think I'll just try another glass of that wine of yours." He seemed very irrational in the matter of drink, but I fetched another bottle. This time he emptied the first tumbler without hesitation, regardless of consequences. He puckered his lips and curled his nose, and said it was rather sourish; but in hot weather it was not so bad as cold water, and was safer for the stomach. He then drew the back of his hand across his mouth, looked at the paper which he had been putting on the wall, and said, "I don't like that pattern a bit; too many crosses on it."

"Indeed," I said, "I never observed the crosses before, but I don't see any harm in them. Why don't you like them?"

"Oh, it looks too like the Catholics, don't you see? too popish. I hate them crosses."

"Really," I replied. "I am sorry to hear that. I am a Catholic myself."

"Oh, lor! Are you, indeed? I always thought you were a Scotchman."

Taylor finished that bottle of wine during the afternoon, and next day he wanted another. He wanted more every day, until he rose to be a three-bottle man. He became reconciled to the crosses on the wall-paper, forgave me for not being a Scotchman, and I believe the run of my cellar would have made him a sincere convert to popery-- as long as the wine lasted.

Soon after this memorable incident, the Minister and Secretary made an official pleasure excursion through the Western District. They visited the court and inspected it, and me, and the books, and the furniture. They found everything correct, and were afterwards so sociable that I expected they would, on returning to Melbourne, speedily promote me, probably to the Bench. But they forgot me, and promoted themselves instead. I have seen them since sitting nearly as high as Haman in those expensive Law courts in Lonsdale Street, while I was a despicable jury-man serving the Crown for ten shillings a day. That is the way of this world; the wicked are well-paid and exalted, while the virtuous are ill-paid and trodden down. At a week's notice I was ordered to leave my Garden of Eden, and I let it to a tenant, the very child of the Evil One. He pruned the vines with goats and fed his cattle on the fruit trees. Then he wrote to inquire why the vines bore no grapes and the fruit trees no fruit, and wanted me to lower the rent, to repair the vineyard and the house, and to move the front gate to the corner of the fence. That man deserved nothing but death, and he died.

In the summer of 1853, the last survivor of the Barrabool tribe came to Colac, and joined the remnant of the Colac blacks, but one night he was killed by them at their camp, near the site of the present hospital. A shallow hole was dug about forty or fifty yards from the south-east corner of the allotment on which the Presbyterian manse was built, and the Colac tribe buried his body there, and stuck branches of trees around his grave. About six months afterwards a Government officer, the head of a department, arrived at Colac, and I rode with him about the township and neighbouring country showing him the antiquities and the monuments, among others the mausoleum of the last of the Barrabools. The leaves had by this time fallen from the dead branches around the sepulchre, and the small twigs on them were decaying. The cattle and goats would soon tread them down and scatter them, and the very site of the grave would soon be unknown.

The officer was a man of culture and of scientific tendencies, and he asked me to dig up the skull of the murdered blackfellow, and sent it to his address in Melbourne. He was desirous of exercising his culture on it, and wished to ascertain whether the skull was bracchy-cephalous, dolichophalous, or polycephalous. I think that was the way he expressed it. I said there was very likely a hole in it, and it would be spoiled; but he said the hole would make no difference. I would do almost anything for science and money, but he did not offer me any, and I did not think a six months' mummy was old enough to steal; it was too fresh. If that scientist would borrow a spade and dig up the corpse himself, I would go away to a sufficient distance and close my eyes and nose until he had deposited the relic in his carpet bag. But I was too conscientious to be accessory to the crime of body-snatching, and he had not courage enough to do the foul deed. That land is now fenced in, and people dwell there. The bones of the last of the Barrabools still rest under somebody's house, or fertilise a few feet of a garden plot.

ON THE NINETY-MILE.

A HOME BY A REMOTER SEA.

The Ninety-Mile, washed by the Pacific, is the sea shore of Gippsland. It has been formed by the mills of two oceans, which for countless ages have been slowly grinding into meal the rocks on the southern coast of Australia; and every swirling tide and howling gale has helped to build up the beach. The hot winds of summer scorch the dry sand, and spin it into smooth, conical hills. Amongst these, low shrubs with grey-green leaves take root, and thrive and flourish under the salt sea spray where other trees would die. Strange plants, with pulpy leaves and brilliant flowers, send forth long green lines, having no visible beginning or end, which cling to the sand and weave over it a network of vegetation, binding together the billowy dunes.

The beach is broken in places by narrow channels, through which the tide rushes, and wanders in many currents among low mudbanks studded with shellfish--the feeding grounds of ducks, and gulls, and swans; and around a thousand islands whose soil has been woven together by the roots of the spiky mangrove, or stunted tea-tree. Upon the muddy flats, scarcely above the level of the water, the black swans build their great circular nests, with long grass and roots compacted with slime. Salt marshes and swamps, dotted with bunches of rough grass, stretch away behind the hummocks. Here, towards the end of the summer, the blacks used to reap their harvest of fat eels, which they drew forth from the soft mud under the roots of the tussocks.

The country between the sea and the mountains was the happy-hunting-ground of the natives before the arrival of the ill-omened white-fellow. The inlets teemed with flathead, mullet, perch, schnapper, oysters, and sharks, and also with innumerable water-fowl. The rivers yielded eels and blackfish. The sandy shores of the islands were honey-combed with the holes in which millions of mutton-birds deposited their eggs in the last days of November in each year. Along many tracks in the scrub the black wallabiesand paddy-melons hopped low. In the open glades among the great gum-trees marched the stately emu, and tall kangaroos, seven feet high, stood erect on their monstrous hind-legs, their little fore-paws hanging in front, and their small faces looking as innocent as sheep.

Every hollow gum-tree harboured two or more fat opossums, which, when roasted, made a rich and savoury meal. Parrots of the most brilliant plumage, like winged flowers, flew in flocks from tree to tree, so tame that you could kill them with a stick, and so beautiful that it seemed a sin to destroy them. Black cockatoos, screaming harshly the while, tore long strips of bark from the messmate, searching for the savoury grub. Bronzed-winged pigeons, gleaming in the sun, rose from the scrub, and flocks of white cockatoos, perched high on the bare limbs of the dead trees, seemed to have made them burst into miraculous bloom like Aaron's rod.

The great white pelican stood on one leg on a sand-bank, gazing along its huge beak at the receding tide, hour after hour, solemn and solitary, meditating on the mysteries of Nature.

But on the mountains both birds and beasts were scarce, as many a famishing white man has found to his sorrow. In the heat of summer the sea-breeze grows faint, and dies before it reaches the ranges. Long ropes of bark, curled with the hot sun, hang motionless from the black-butts and blue gums; a few birds may be seen sitting on the limbs of the trees, with their wings extended, their beaks open, panting for breath, unable to utter a sound from their parched throats.

"When all food fails then welcome haws" is a saying that does not apply to Australia, which yields no haws or fruit of any kind that can long sustain life. A starving man may try to allay the pangs of hunger with the wild raspberries, or with the cherries which wear their seeds outside, but the longer he eats them, the more hungry he grows. One resource of the lost white man, if he has a gun and ammunition, is the native bear, sometimes called monkey bear. Its flesh is strong and muscular, and its eucalyptic odour is stronger still. A dog will eat opossum with pleasure, but he must be very hungry before he will eat bear; and how lost to all delicacy of taste, and sense of refinement, must the epicure be who will make the attempt! The last quadruped on which a meal can be made is the dingo, and the last winged creature is the owl, whose scanty flesh is viler even than that of the hawk or carrion crow, and yet a white man has partaken of all these and survived. Some men have tried roasted snake, but I never heard of anyone who could keep it on his stomach. The blacks, with their keen scent, knew when a snake was near by the odour it emitted, but they avoided the reptile whether alive or dead.

Before any white man had made his abode in Gippsland, a schooner sailed from Sydney chartered by a new settler who had taken up a station in the Port Phillip district. His wife and family were on board, and he had shipped a large quantity of stores, suitable for commencing life in a new land. It was afterwards remembered that the deck of the vessel was encumbered with cargo of various kinds, including a bullock dray, and that the deck hamper would unfit her to encounter bad weather. As she did not arrive at Port Phillip within a reasonable time, a cutter was sent along the coast in search of her; and her long boat was found ashore near the Lakes Entrance, but nothing else belonging to her was ever seen.

When the report arose in 1843 that a white woman had been seen with the blacks, it was supposed that she was one of the passengers of the missing schooner, and parties of horsemen went out to search for her among the natives, but the only white woman ever found was a wooden one--the figure-head of a ship.

Some time afterwards, when Gippsland had been settled by white men, a tree was discovered on Woodside station near the beach, in the bark of which letters had been cut, and it was said they would correspond with the initials of the names of some of the passengers and crew of the lost schooner, and by their appearance they must have been carved many years previously. This tree was cut down, and the part of the trunk containing the letters was sawn off and sent to Melbourne. There is little doubt that the letters on the tree had been cut by one of the survivors of that ill-fated schooner, who had landed in the long boat near the Lakes, and had made their way along the Ninety-Mile beach to Woodside. They were far from the usual track of coasting vessels, and had little chance of attracting attention by signals or fires. Even if they had plenty of food, it was impossible for them to travel in safety through that unknown country to Port Phillip, crossing the inlets, creeks, and swamps, in daily danger of losing their lives by the spears of the wild natives. They must have wandered along the ninety-mile as far as they could go, and then, weary and worn out for want of food, reluctant to die the death of the unhonoured dead, one of them had carved the letters on the tree, as a last despairing message to their friends, before they were killed by the savages, or succumbed to starvation.

"For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?"

GIPPSLAND PIONEERS.

AT THE OLD PORT.

Most of them were Highlanders, and the news of the discovery of Gippsland must often have been imparted in Gaelic, for many of the children of the mist could speak no English when they landed.

Year after year settlers had advanced farther from Sydney along the coastal ranges, until stations were occupied to the westward of Twofold Bay. In that rugged country, where no wheeled vehicle could travel, bullocks were trained to carry produce to the bay, and to bring back stores imported from Sydney. Each train was in charge of a white man, with several native drivers. But rumours of better lands towards the south were rife, and Captain Macalister, of the border police, equipped a party of men under McMillan to go in search of them. Armed and provisioned, they journeyed over the mountains, under the guidance of the faithful native Friday, and at length from the top of a new Mount Pisgah beheld a fair land, watered throughout as the Paradise of the Lord. Descending into the plains, McMillan selected a site for a station, left some of his men to build huts and stockyards, and returned to report his discovery to Macalister.

Slabs were split with which walls were erected, but before a roof was put on them the blacks suddenly appeared and began to throw their spears at the intruders; one spear of seasoned hardwood actually penetrated through a slab. The men, all but one, who shall be nameless, seized their guns and fired at the blacks, who soon disappeared. The white men also disappeared over the mountains; the rout was mutual.

But the country was too good to be occupied solely by savages, and when McMillan returned with reinforcements he made some arrangements, the exact particulars of which he would never disclose. He brought cattle to his run, and they quickly grew fat; but civilised man does not live by fat cattle alone, and a market had to be sought. Twofold Bay was too far away, and young Melbourne was somewhere beyond impassable mountains. McMillan built a small boat, which he launched on the river, and pulled down to the lakes in search of an outlet. He found it, but the current was so strong that it carried him out to sea. He had to land on the outer beach, and to drag his boat back over the sands to the inner waters.

He next rode westward with his man Friday to look for a port at Corner Inlet, and he blazed a track to the Albert River. Friday was an inland black. He gazed at the river, which was flowing towards the mountains, and said:

"What for stupid yallock* yan along a bulga**?"

[* Footnote: *Yallock, river. **Bulga, mountain.]

McMillan tried to explain the theory of the tides.

"One big yallock down there push him along, come back by-and-by." And Friday saw the water come back by-and-by.

They reached the mouth of the river on February 1st, 1841, saw a broad expense of salt water, and McMillan concluded that he had found a port for Gippsland.

Ten months afterwards Jack Shay arrived at the port. He had first come to Twofold Bay from Van Diemen's Land, and nothing was known about his former life. "That's nothing to nobody," he said. He was a bushman, rough and weather-beaten, with only one peculiarity. The quart pot which he slung to his belt would hold half a gallon of tea, while other pots only held a quart, and that was the reason why he was known all the way from Monaroo to Adelaide as "Jack of the Quart Pot."