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Account of the Five Islands, the Eden of New South Wales—Terms of agreement—Journey up the country—Conflagration of the Bush—A workingman's hut—Musktree—Descent of the Illawarra range—A settler's hut, with travellers lodged for the night—Romantic scenery—Awkward bridge—A stock-station hut—A sample of the population

IMAGINE the delight with which, after being unsuccessful for about three weeks, I got my first job in the colony. At the period of my debarkation most of the large settlers were up the country on their farms, it being the season for important farm operations, such as sheep washing, sheep shearing, wool pressing for exportation, reaping, cattle muster, &c.; and besides, I had no acquaintance in Sydney from whom I could hear of employment, or to whom I could make myself known. My engagement at last was more a matter of accident than the result of my own endeavours. The landlord of the public house, where I went every morning to look over the advertisements in hope of finding something that would suit me, had been brought up to the same trade as myself; knowing what kind of work I was seeking, he recommended me to a customer of his who had come up from the Five Islands with a boat load of cedar, and wanted a snug little hut put up for his family; they had been there some time, but had been living, hitherto, under a few sheets of bark.

The Five Islands (by the aborigines much more euphoniously called Illa Warra) is a tract of New South Wales, a short distance south of Sydney, on the sea-coast, and so called from five small islands which lie a short distance off, immediately abreast of it. It may be described loosely as a plot of the richest soil, bounded on one side by the sea, and on the other by enormous masses of mountain, confusedly heaped together. These are covered either with dense dark forests, or low bushy scrub, knee high or higher, with flats of swampy table-land, and gloomy ravines, into whose depths the eye cannot reach. The soil is excellent. I have heard some of the settlers say, that they could dig down 40 feet through the soil of their farms on this seaside tract without finding a stone as large as a pea. Little crystal brooks of the coldest and purest water, making their way out of the mountain reservoirs above, traverse the ground at all seasons of the year, in their passage to the sea. It was therefore one of the most amiable features of the policy of the best Governor this colony ever had, to give out in this district farms to a number of little settlers; for a poor man's use of land is of course first agricultural, and a fertile soil must be an immense advantage. Amidst the wild dark gullies of the mountain, and along the solitary course of the cool shadowy streams, grew at that time great numbers of rich and massive cedars, the price of the timber of which was so high as to counterbalance in the minds of the hardy working men of the colony the difficulties, toils, and perils of procuring it for the Sydney market.

My agreement with Mr. —— (the settler who now wanted a hut put up) was soon made, for I knew so very little of the customs of the colony that I saw no objections to any thing he proposed. It was stated in the agreement, which was a written one, that I was to proceed to Illa Warra and erect for Mr. —— a house of such or such timber, of so many feet length, so many breadth, and so many height, &c. &c.; in consideration whereof, Mr. —— was to pay me the sum of 75l.; supply me with rations at a rate specified for each article; lend me one of his convict servants to assist in cutting down and splitting the timber, and other work requiring two hands; and draw out of the bush the split stuff, &c. as soon as it was ready. The bargain thus far concluded, he told me I could have if I chose an advance of 5l. before leaving Sydney, to buy any extra tools I wanted. I then found I should need to buy a cross-cut saw and some other small articles, which however I did with my own money, still having sufficient by me for that purpose; and having seen the tools, my own tool chest, and clothes, &c. aboard the boat, started along with one of Mr. ——'s men by land for the Five Islands.

This man was the convict who was to be my mate. In New South Wales it is not thought any derogation to travel with convict servants; in fact it is often unavoidable. It was a very hot morning, and as we had each a small bundle, our jackets were off before we were two miles over the red dusty hills just out of Sydney. At one or two creeks where we attempted to drink, the water was so dreadfully brackish as to be too nauseous to swallow; and into one of them, from a little branch just above my head, as I was tasting, dropped a yellow snake about a foot long, and as soon as he had accomplished this feat swam over to a hole in the opposite bank, apparently as well pleased to have escaped me as I certainly was to have escaped him. Finding so little relief from the creeks, we resolved to push on to the half-way house and have some refreshment and a smoke. A good heart soon gets through its task; so in little more than a couple of hours we reached our destination. But here, instead of the refreshing beer of Old England, I found I must put up with rum and water; the rum most execrable Bengal. After stopping about half an hour we lighted our short pipes (for such is the usual travellers' pipe in New South Wales, where every body smokes except ladies) and started again, when less than three hours' walking brought us to Liverpool, beyond which, however, we had still thirteen miles to go to complete our first day's stage. I never wish to have such another walk; by the time we reached Liverpool I had actually ceased to perspire, and was in a high fever; moreover, as is mostly the case, long confinement on shipboard had so unfitted my feet for walking, that they had swelled even to above the ankles so much that at night I could hardly get my half-boots off. At the suggestion of my companion, we deferred our further journey till the cool of the evening. After dinner, tired and jaded as I was, I could not help taking a stroll round the township, as it was then called. Thirst after knowledge I have always through life found to be one of the most self-rewarding tendencies of our nature; it is one which I would recommend the young to subordinate to nothing but the moral and religious attributes of their minds: but let all who value their virtue, their worth, and the inborn rewards of the mind, take no less care, on the other part, that not the desire of knowledge only, but knowledge itself, be held in watchful and perpetual subservience to the interests of men, and the honour of our Divine Creator. My reader will doubtless say that these are the ruminations of a later day; and he will say aright: they are so—would they were not. But to return: Liverpool was at this time a straggling and pretty little country town, built, one might say, on a green, and with a cool stream gliding along between deep-sloping banks at its side.

Before our departure from the township, about seven in the evening, I heard the people talking of the fire that was burning in the bush, and saw numbers of them assembled in groups, pointing out to each other its progress across the adjacent country. In New South Wales, as the winter days are much longer than they are in high latitudes, so the summer days are much shorter: thus when we were two hours on the road it had become quite dark, and as we were intersecting by that time a tract of bush that the fire had already swept through, I had a full opportunity of examining this, one of the finest sights which tropical countries display. Our road was about the width of an English second-rate turnpike road. Above us the sky was gloomy and still; all round us the far-stretching forests exposed a strange and varied pageant of darkness and fire, accompanied by the crackling of flames and the crash of falling trees. Here was a bridge over a deep creek, now empty with summer drought, with all its huge sleepers glowing in red charcoal and tumbling together into heaps in the channel, and carrying down with them the top layer of slabs that, covered with earth, had been the roadway; over these we had to leap and clamber as we could, unless there was some track down across the creek-bed, by the side of the bridge. Once my companion was very nearly in a furnace of red charcoal up to his middle, or rather he was in; for the ground sank beneath his feet, and with that admirable presence of mind which a rough life so generally engenders, he flung himself, while sinking, forward on his hands on to a solid spot, and instantaneously drew his legs up after him and sprang forward. Here, again, some huge old tree came thundering down right across the road, and its boughs kindling from the opposite side were in full roaring blaze, lighting up every thing nigh with ruddy brilliance, and throwing into the dense volume of smoke above a red semi-transparency. Farther on again, where the bush was thinner and the materials for ravage more scanty, the fire had nearly subsided; all was obscure and silent, except some single trunk, off in the bush, hollow and old, and headless, through whose chimney-like barrel went upwards with fierce steady roar a volume of flame and crowds of sparks into the blackness of night; and then, all on a sudden, the fire would reach a cluster of tree-heads as yet untouched, and go blazing and crackling and leaping through them until nothing was left for it to devour. The heat was in many places intense, and the smoke in others suffocating; whilst snakes, guanas, bandicoots, opossums, &c. were crossing the road in every direction, each in its natural dumbness or with its wild weak cry of fear. In one place we saw a very large opossum (in the language of the country an old man 'possum) on the edge of a lofty hollow tree trunk, that had been no doubt his home, out of which and alongside him, as he moved to and fro to avoid it, the increasing fire kept ever and anon shooting up its pointed tongues: we stood watching him until the poor animal, no longer able to endure the torture, leaped to the ground, a height of full 40 feet, where to my astonishment, after lying an instant motionless, he picked himself up suddenly, then fell again and rolled over and over three or four times, and finally went off like mad across the bush. I have since found that the gift of these animals in this way is perfectly wonderful; certainly if there is in this world an unconquerable dare-devil animal, it is the old man 'possum, and indeed all his family, mother, sons, and daughters, after their sucking days are over: until then you may tame them. Before we got into Campbell Town, our destination for the night, we met with another and different exemplification of the effects of the fire on dumb animals. One of the commissaries of the colony had ridden his horse out from Campbell Town towards Liverpool, where he resided, as far as where the fire was pretty fierce on each side of the road, and to some distance onward through it; but here the horse became frightened, then restive, and then unmanageable; and when we came up, horse and rider were literally pirouetting together in circles about the road, the commissary on foot, holding the bridle with both hands, and the horse for the most part on two legs also, leading the dance. With a good deal of exertion we succeeded in driving the terrified animal in the same direction as his rider wished to lead him in, until quite clear of the fire, and then left them. At nearly twelve o'clock at night we reached our journey's end, a little hut by the road-side just entering the township. Here my fellow-traveller had a brother living, whose lagging (transportation) having occurred some years before his own, he was now free; and had a job of splitting and fencing from the settler to whom the ground belonged. My companion's well-known voice soon aroused the sleeper, who came to the door in his shirt: in his shirt lit the fire; in his shirt got us supper; in his shirt joined us in a feed and a smoke; and in his shirt made our bed, and tumbled into it with us.

But here I must remember that the mysteries of an Australian bedmaking demand somewhat explicit description. I shall not generalise, but speak here of the particular instance alone. The hut itself, which was merely a few sheets of bark stripped from trees, and each varying from the size of a common door to that of double that width by the same length, was but a single area of about 9 feet one way by 6 the other: the roof too was of bark, and of the usual shape. One of the 6-feet ends was a chimney, throughout its whole width, in which the fire was made by logs of any length and thickness available; on the earthen hearth, at the other 6-feet end, was a sort of berth, also of bark, like the bunks on board ship, fixed at about 3 feet from the ground; whilst at the 9-feet side next the road was the door, which likewise was of bark; and at the opposite parallel side was a little table, and that too was of bark, to wit, a sheet about 3 feet one way by 2 the other, nailed on to four little posts driven into the ground, and having of course its inner or smooth side upwards. The architect of the building had used all his materials whilst they were green, so that in seasoning they had twisted into all manner of forms except planes; and as is usually the case the worst example came from the most responsible quarter; the table was the crookedest thing in the whole hut, not excepting the dog's hind leg. Standing about the floor were sundry square-ended round blocks of wood, just as they were first sawn off the tree transversely: they were each about eighteen inches long, and their official rank in the domestic system was equivalent to that of the civilized chair. After a good supper of hot fried beefsteaks, damper bread and tea, which our host, who was a free-hearted, hardworking bush-man, gave with many a "Come, eat, lad, don't be afraid; there is plenty more where this came from," &c., &c., &c. according to the custom of the colony and especially of his class, we betook ourselves to a smoke of good old Brazil, over the latter part of our quart pots of tea; and then at nearly two o'clock my companion reminded his brother that it was "time to pig down." Accordingly our entertainer clearing the floor by making us stand in the chimney, putting the blocks under the table, and giving his dog a kick, which I thought the thing least to his credit that I had seen him do, began to "make the dab." This was accomplished by stretching his own bed, which was only adapted for a single person, lengthwise across the hut, at about 6 or 7 feet from the fire-place; then laying down across the hut in the same manner between the bed and the fire-place all the old clothes he could muster of his own; and finally over these he spread about half a dozen good sized dried sheepskins with the wool on. These, with a blanket spread over the whole, really made a very tolerable bed. Certainly towards morning I began to feel a good deal as if I were lying with my body in a field and my legs in the ditch beside: however, I have had many a worse lodging between that night and this. For pillow we each had one of the wooden blocks. The blankets were the most patrician class of the accommodations; of these we had three very good ones for covering, but it was not long before the heat of the night compelled us to throw them off, nor much longer before the musquitoes compelled us to draw one of them on again. Small as these insects are, their sting is so annoying that I do not think either of us would have slept till daylight had not our host at length gone out, in his shirt as ever, and brought in a piece of dried cowdung, which being lit and laid at the further end of the hut kept smouldering on and throwing out a dull peculiar scented smoke for hours. This proved a complete remedy, and one which I never afterwards forgot. I do not know what is the reason, but musquitoes are proof against strong wood smoke, yet not against this; while at the same time it is not at all seriously offensive to man, but wood smoke is. By about four o'clock in the morning we were fast asleep.

I was awakened by our host coming in from his work to breakfast. It was about eight o'clock, and his brother, who had also been up some time, had lit the fire, boiled a piece of salted beef, baked a cake on the hot hearth, and made the tea. This sort of readiness and activity is a remarkable feature in the character of the working population of the Australian colonies.

After breakfast we lit our pipes, and bidding our hospitable acquaintance good bye, started once more. To his hospitality was added a pressing invitation to me to stop at his hut at any time I might be coming by that way. Our next stage was to Appin, which, the excessively hot day before being succeeded as is often the case in this country by a cloudy and rather bleak one, we accomplished easily by noon: our way still lay between forests in some places, and in others over fine, lofty, cleared, and cultivated hills, along a good turnpike road. After dinner, which we took at the little inn of the settlement, we struck off along a wild bush track, direct for the coast mountains; for it should be stated, although our journey was from one sea-side place to another, we had made it by a wide sweep inland, and not in a direction parallel to the coast; the country immediately behind which, in this part of New South Wales, being so broken and mountainous as to afford no practicable track.

Indeed, I could not but wonder how the road we were now pursuing from Appin towards the coast had been discovered. I was not then aware that the aborigines are so well acquainted with the bush as to be able to point out the most practicable tracks in any direction. After travelling through dense and lofty forests on rich soil, over dwarf brush and scrub on stony hills and sandy plains, bare rocks and rushy swamps, in fact after traversing a line of country as varied in character as can be imagined, we came toward sundown to the entrance of the thick brush of the Illa Warra mountain above Bullie. I recollect one incident that struck me very forcibly as we made our way to the brink of the descent: I suddenly became sensible of a most delicious scent of musk, and on calling my companion's attention to it he stopped and plucked a leaf from a beautiful slender shrub, whose long shoots overhung our path, and gave it me to smell. It was a tree musk-scented, and to such a degree that the leaves I put in my pocket-book and carried away with me retained their agreeable odour when I examined them many months afterwards. We now soon came to the edge of the mountain. At one spot we stood on the brink of a precipice of vast depth, and saw down below us the mighty sea diminished into insignificance, most like the waters of a lower world. The mountain, at the spot where we went down, is pretty closely timbered, and the trees are lofty: no grass grows beneath them, as is usually the case where the forest is sufficiently dense to keep the ground under continual shadow. In the midst of our descent, which was so steep as to compel us in some places to stop ourselves against the trees, I was surprised to recognise the tracks of dray-wheels (drays being the common luggage conveyance of the colony); for it was evidently impossible that any beast could back a dray-load down such a steep. My fellow-traveller however informed me that it had been let down by ropes fixed to the dray, and passed round the trees; the shaft bullock (for oxen are the draught beasts in common use) merely holding up the shafts. I was glad at length to find myself at the foot of the mountain. I think I never felt anything more difficult to bear than the strain on the knee joints, occasioned by this descent; it was not exactly pain, but something worse.

The Australian twilight is short; and it was now become almost dark. Happily we had but a short way to travel before reaching our restingplace for the night. We were now on that flat bordered on the one side by the sea, and on the other limited by the mountain, which I have already mentioned as being the Illa Warra district; and at this particular point it is scarcely a gunshot across. We consequently could hear the measured wash of the sea distinctly through the solemn stillness of the evening forest. A feeling of breathless awe steals over the spirit in traversing these grand and solitary forests amidst the thickening obscurity of evening: and buoyant as my spirits then were, I could not help being sensible of this influence. Suddenly the quick, cheerful bark of a dog startled the echoes; and in another instant a voice of Irish accent called him back as he came bounding towards us from round the corner of a square low building that was just discernible in the dark. A few more steps and turning the corner of this building we stood at the door of the settler's hut, where we were to stop for the night. It was one of those huts which must be ranked among the remarkable objects of Australian life. Situated on some main track and alone in the midst of the wilderness, one of these little "cribs" necessarily becomes the nightly rendezvous of numbers of travellers. If the traveller have no food with him, a share of what there is is always freely offered him; whether any remuneration is given, depends entirely upon the circumstances and disposition of the parties. If it be a poor man whose hut the wayfaring public has thus invested with the dignity of an inn, persons in good circumstances always make him some present for the accommodation: if it be a settler in tolerably good circumstances who is thus situated, remuneration is not thought so imperative; but in either case if the traveller be a poor man, he is welcomed to whatever there may be, and nothing is expected from him in return. The same hospitality is maintained in accommodations for rest. Those who have a blanket with them contribute it to the general stock; those who have none have equal share with those who have. These customs lead very naturally to a great degree of frankness and cordiality among the persons, most of whom are thus meeting for the first time, and the evenings consequently are for the most part spent in cheerful conversation and merriment. This species of arrangement extends throughout the colony; with this difference, that off the main lines of road, and still more so the farther you advance into the bush, the usual run of travellers are not only not expected to make any recompense, but in many places it would be treated as an insult to offer it. As full twothirds of the labouring population of the country are in perpetual migration, the custom is a very proper one. It probably originated in the first place from the smallness of the community, almost every one knowing almost every other; and there is no doubt that the great scarcity of cash in the up country parts has principally maintained it.

Meantime such in this respect were our night's quarters. The hut was well built of slabs split out of fine straight-grained timber, with hardly a splinter upon them; and consisted of several compartments, all on the ground floor. The only windows were square holes in the sides of the hut, and a good log fire was blazing in the chimney. On stools, and benches, and blocks about the hut sat a host of wayfarers like ourselves; and several lay at their ease in corners on their saddlecloths or blankets, whilst saddles and packs of luggage were heaped up on all sides. Supper was over, and the short pipes were fuming away in all directions. Our hosts were two Irishmen, brothers, who had got a little bit of good land cleared here in the wilderness, and refused nobody a feed and shelter for the night. They soon put down a couple of quart pots of water before the blazing fire, made us some tea, and set before us the usual fare, a piece of fine corned beef, and a wheaten cake baked on the hearth. And here I should inform the reader how a damper is made. Flour is mixed up merely with water, and kneaded for about a couple of minutes; the dough is then flattened out into a cake, which should never be more than an inch and a half or two inches thick, and may be of any diameter required; the ashes of the wood, which is burnt almost everywhere in great profusion, owing to its plentifulness, are then drawn off the hearth (for the fire is on the ground, not in a grate) by a shovel; and on the glowing smooth surface thus exposed the cake is lightly deposited, by being held over it on the open hands, and the hands suddenly drawn from under it. The red ashes are then lightly turned back over the cake with the shovel. In the course of twenty minutes or half an hour, on removing the ashes, the cake is found excellently baked; and with a light duster, or the tuft of a bullock's tail, every vestige of the ashes is switched off, and the cake, if the operations have been well conducted, comes to table as clean as a captain's biscuit from a pastry-cook's shop. Merrily sped the couple of hours betwixt our arrival and going to bed. One sang a song, another told some tale of the olden time, when but few white men were in the colony, another repeated the news he had just heard of the bushrangers, another described a new tract of land he had just found out for a cattle-run, and others contented themselves with that endless subject of dissertation among the colonists, the relative excellences of their working bullocks. My share was to answer all the questions (rather all that were answerable) which any and all thought proper to put to me on the subject of affairs in England; and to pocket with the best grace I could (for most of these men had been convicts) the jokes they not very sparingly, but I must say with very good humour, cut on me for having come to the colony "to make a fortune," or for being "a free object" (subject), or for having "lagged myself for fear the king should do it for me." All these little matters notwithstanding, the evening passed away very pleasantly; if there were many things in these men which I could not approve, there was much more that I could not but admire. There was a sort of manly independence of disposition, which secured truthfulness and sincerity at least among themselves. If the penalty for the practice of that truthfulness toward the superior classes had been fixed too high, I felt that allowance ought to be made for it in estimating their character. Some time before midnight a general collection of bedding took place, as usual; the customary belt of bed was constructed all across the hut in front of the fire; and as in this instance the hut happened to be about 12 or 15 feet across, and we mustered nearly a man to each foot of the diameter, a very pretty row of capless heads and bare feet soon displayed themselves beyond the opposite ends of the blanketing. On blazed the merry fire made up for the night; loud snored those who were so disposed; and louder grumbled ever and anon those who were not; hither and thither bounded and barked the dog around the hut, till he thought his master was asleep, and could no longer take notice of his vigilance; and dreams came and realities went; and memory had no more added to her task of the day.

With the dawn all was bustle, for Jem and Pat Geraghty were early risers and hard workers. The latter of them, poor fellow, was killed two or three years afterwards by a pistol going off in his pocket. Many a kind word has there been uttered over his memory by the traveller when passing the hut where his good-natured voice is heard no more! Bad habits are easy to learn; and here it was I recollect the following example: I first lit my pipe as I dressed myself. The horsemen were not long in finding their horses, for it is usual for every horseman to carry his hobbles slung on his horse's neck, and putting them on the beast's forelegs at night turn him out in the open forest to shift for himself. Most horses live on grass in this way for months together, and it is almost incredible what work they can perform. For instance, I have known a stockman ride his horse sixty or seventy miles a-day, and with little abatement continue this for five or six days together; the horse all the time feeding only on grass and stabling in the bush. Of course I do not mean to state this as the average; I merely cite it as a single case that came within my knowledge to show what a horse can do without artificial food and housing. It is however nothing at all uncommon for a stockman to jog fifty miles a day for several days together. When turned out for the night the horses seldom stray far; they are hungry and tired, and like to make the most of their time on any patch of good grass they come to. But if a young horse does happen to walk off, he is easily tracked by the experienced eye of the bushman; and hobbled as he is, as easily overtaken. It sometimes, however, happens that a horse breaks his hobble chain, and then good-bye. It may be months before he is heard of again; by which time he has got hardly recognizable with good looks, sleek and pursy, and retires into some snug gully of the mountains, enjoying his leisure with dignity.

Breakfast over, first one and then another started. Most were going up the mountain we had come down. A few hundred paces brought us out on to the sea beach; and here my fellow-traveller taking off his boots (for the labouring class wear neither stockings nor socks), began to pace lightly along the wet sand from which the tide was retreating, and observing how much more easily he seemed to walk thus than in his half boots, I followed his example, which proved to be a very good one. Our walk was now for some miles a most delightful one; here we kept the tide-washed sand; there, where a long point shot out into the sea, we struck through the grassy bush across it to the next beach. At length we struck entirely into the bush, and passing through the most novel and beautiful scenery made our way toward the Yalla-Lake. In one spot I recollect we came suddenly on the most beautiful little natural meadow in the midst of the tall gloomy forest. So green was the sward and so level the surface that I could not for a long time yield belief to the assurance that it was not of artificial construction. It had obtained the name of "Fairy Meadow."* In other places we passed along avenues overarched with the boughs of trees and vines, so dense that no sunbeam penetrated; the soil was damp as in winter, and bare of all herbage. Here for the first time I saw the lofty cabbage tree, shooting up its slender barrel, seldom more than a foot in diameter at the height of three feet from the ground, to a height of 100 or 150 feet, and spreading out its umbrella-shaped top, swayed to and fro by every breeze. Some of the creeks we had to pass were rather queer-looking places to be crossed by such bridges as alone offered themselves. The Mullet creek where we passed it must have been nearly five and thirty feet wide; and the bridge was one of these slender cabbage trees grown on the bank and flung by some bushman or black across the creek with his axe, either with a view to using it as a bridge or for the sake of the interior part of the head, which is very similar when dressed to cabbage, and is a favourite article of food with many. I confess that it was with no slight trepidation that I made my first attempt to walk betwixt 30 and 40 feet upon a small round surface, the middle of which was curved down nearly to the very water's edge, with its own weight merely, and with the weight of the passenger was actually under water two or three inches; and which all the while kept springing and plashing the water at every step that was taken. But as my guide, who was used to these feats, as I also soon became, made his way across without expressing any doubt about my nerve, I scarcely had any alternative but to follow him. Again pulling off my boots and stockings, I began to edge myself slowly across sideways, but I quickly found that would never do; I was nearly gone, when the thought struck me to imagine myself walking along the joist of an unboarded house, which I was pretty well used to, and following the thought by the practice I turned face forward and stepped carelessly and firmly on. I found I could do it this way very well, only the spot that was under water in the middle rather baulked me. However, it was but a single step, and that over I felt myself so bold that I did the remainder with the utmost assurance. The agility and ease with which the blacks trot across these cabbage tree bridges is quite astonishing; even the gins (women) with their pickaninnies on their backs seem to cross quite at their ease.

[* Originally, I believe, Faro's Meadow.]

We now betook ourselves to a narrow path or track, and following it at length arrived at a cattle station on the border of the lake, where a good dinner of hot beef-steaks, bread, and tea was soon set before us. Here I saw, for the first time, a man (whom I saw many times afterwards), one of those whose melancholy end is narrated in the number of Chambers's Tracts upon the subject of Norfolk Island. He was a merry, free-hearted fellow, still a prisoner of the crown, and employed by his master in taking care of stock (horned cattle). And here it may not be out of place to make a few remarks upon this occupation and the class of men engaged in it. In New South Wales large settlers possess some thousands of horned cattle; these are divided into convenient numbers, and stationed in various parts as their owner may happen to possess land. Each is branded, generally before six months old; and is then suffered to ramble at large over the pasture or technically the run assigned to the herd it belongs to: and these runs are unenclosed. Where, therefore, there are several of these runs adjoining, the various herds often mingle; but as one part of the stockman's duty is continually to search up and restore his cattle to their own run, and as these men always assist each other, the different herds are kept tolerably distinct. It however is an unavoidable incident of the system that some get lost. Either they wander away into the mountains, or die in some unfrequented creek, or, without design on any one's part, attach themselves to some passing herd that is shifting its station, &c. Hence it is impossible to make stockmen accountable for every beast; especially in some of the mountainous or mountain-bordered runs; one of which last was that we had arrived at. It will readily be understood what strong temptation was thus put in the way of men whose honesty had been subverted by a thief's life from infancy upwards, to sell an odd beast or two when they considered they could do so without detection; and it would be a very imperfect notion of the population of New South Wales that should fail to include the fact that there are scores of the free to be met with who are just as ready for a good purchase on the cross as the bond for a sale. For a beast that would fetch 8l. or 10l. of the butchers in Sydney (who, by the bye, were at this time not very particular in buying every head they killed from the right owner), for such a beast the cross-dealer would give the stockman 3l. or 4l. in ready dollars. Common sense could not expect the convict stockman, kept by his master without wages and often most miserably fed and clad, to remain true to his trust under such temptation. Thus sometimes a bullock was turned over to the travelling cattle-jobber: sometimes three or four young calves were driven away before branding into a snug bight of the mountain and never brought to light till they were branded with a false brand and would no longer follow their mothers, and so lead to detection. Sometimes the brands of beasts, not very remarkable otherwise, were obliterated by branding with fresh brands; and in latter days it has been found that sometimes the beast has been thrown and the branded section of the hide actually flayed off. Let the reader in short imagine what was likely to take place on a run of perhaps ten miles each way, inhabited only by ten or twelve convicts in charge of five or six herds of cattle. This game, it was afterwards known, was going on pretty smartly at the stations on the Yalla Lake, where we had arrived; and one of the most active hands in it was the unhappy fellow I have referred to, who, however, was only temporarily engaged there. Not knowing all this at the time, I took a great liking to the man: I may also say that I did not even suspect him to be a prisoner of the crown. He was well dressed, had plenty of money, had a good horse at the door, and seemed quite his own master. As we came in sight of the hut the dogs gave the alarm, and the stockman belonging to the station came out and kept the dogs off while we got into the hut. It appeared in the course of a few minutes that we had disturbed them at a game at cards for a shilling a game a head. They were all, as I learned afterwards, still prisoners. On my mate telling them, with reference to me, that it was "all right," the cards were brought to light again, and the game went on. Little did I imagine, as that goodnatured, thoughtless gambler joined the stockman belonging to the hut in pressing me to eat heartily, and cut his jokes upon the plenitude of beef they enjoyed in that part of the country,—little did I imagine that he would very nearly involve me in the meshes of the law at a future period; or that I should, many years afterwards, when hard labour had placed me in independence, read the tale of his melancholy end in an English periodical, or write these remarks upon one of the earliest scenes of his fatal career.

The last stage of my journey (the third day's from Sydney) it is not my intention to describe minutely, as it would lead to too exact an identification of the spot where it terminated; and that again would indicate the individual whose job I had undertaken much too exactly. Suffice it, that that evening we supped in safety at our journey's destined end.