Chapter Seventeen.Mr Winslow in a Different Light.“You’ll find him a rough stick,” said Archie.“What, rougher than me or Harry?” said Bob.“Well, as you’ve put the question I’ll answer you pat. I don’t consider either you or Harry particularly rough. If you’re rough you’re right, Bob, and it is really wonderful what a difference mixing with the world has done for both of you; and if you knew a little more of the rudiments of English grammar, you would pass at a pinch.”“Thank ye,” said Bob.“You’ve got a bit of the bur-r-r of Northumbria in your brogue, but I do believe people like it, and Harry isn’t half the Cockney he used to be. But, Bob, this man—I wish I could say gentleman—Winslow never was, and never could be, anything but a shell-back. He puts me in mind of the warty old lobsters one sees crawling in and out among the rocks away down at the point yonder.“But, oh!” added Archie, “what a little angel the daughter is! Of course she is only a baby. And what a lovely name—Etheldene! Isn’t it sweet, Bob?”“I don’t know about the sweetness; there is a good mouthful of it, anyhow.”“Off you go, Bob, and dress. Have you darned those holes in your gloves?”“No; bought a new pair.”“Just like your extravagance. Be off!”Bob Cooper took extra pains with his dressing to-day, and when he appeared at last before his little wife Sarah, she turned him round and round and round three times, partly for luck, and partly to look at him with genuine pride up and down.“My eye,” she said at last, “you does look stunning! Not a pin in sight, nor a string sticking out anywheres. You’re going to see a young lady, I suppose; but Sarah ain’t jealous of her little man. She likes to see him admired.”“Yes,” said Bob, laughing; “you’ve hit the nail straight on the head; I am going to see a young lady. She is fourteen year old, I think. But bless your little bobbing bit o’ a heart, lass, it isn’t for her I’m dressed. No; I’m going with t’ young Squire. He may be all the same as us out here, and lets me call him Archie. But what are they out here, after all? Why, only a set o’ whitewashed heathens. No, I must dress for the company I’m in.”“And the very young lady—?”“Is a Miss Winslow. I think t’ young Squire is kind o’ gone on her, though sheisonly a baby. Well, good-bye, lass.”“Good-bye, little man.”Etheldene ran with smiles and outstretched arms to meet Archie, but drew back when she noticed the immense bearded stranger.“It’s only Bob,” said Archie. “Is your father in?”“Yes, and we’re all going to have tea out here under the trees.”The “all” was not a very large number; only Etheldene’s governess and father, herself, and a girl playmate.Poor Etheldene’s mother had died in the Bush when she was little more than a baby. The rough life had hardly suited her. And this child had been such a little bushranger from her earliest days that her present appearance, her extreme beauty and gentleness, made another of those wonderful puzzles for which Australia is notorious.Probably Etheldene knew more about the blacks, with their strange customs and manners, their curious rites and superstitions, and more about the home life of wallabies, kangaroos, dingoes, birds, insects, and every thing that grew wild, than many a professed naturalist; but she had her own names, or names given by blacks, to the trees and to the wild flowers.While Etheldene, somewhat timidly it must be confessed, was leading big Bob round the gardens and lawns by the hand as if he were a kind of exaggerated schoolboy, and showing him all her pets—animate and inanimate—her ferns and flowers and birds, Winslow himself came upon the scene with theMorning Heraldin his hand. He was dressed—if dressing it could be called—in the same careless manner Archie had last seen him. It must be confessed, however, that this semi-negligent style seemed to suit him. Archie wondered if ever he had worn a necktie in his life, and how he would look in a dress suit. He lounged up with careless ease, and stuck out his great spade of a hand.Archie remembered he was Etheldene’s father, and shook it.“Well, youngster, how are you? Bobbish, eh? Ah, I see Ethie has got in tow with a new chum. Your friend? Is he now? Well, that’s the sort of man I like. He’s bound to do well in this country. You ain’t a bad sort yourself, lad; but nothing to that, no more than a young turkey is to an emu. Well, sit down.”Mr Winslow flung himself on the grass. It might be rather damp, but he dared not trust his weight and bulk on a lawn-chair.“So your friend’s going to the Bush, and going to take you with him, eh?”Archie’s proud soul rebelled against this way of talking, but he said nothing. It was evident that Mr Winslow looked upon him as a boy.“Well, I hope you’ll do right both of you. What prospects have you?”Archie told him how high his hopes were, and how exalted his notions.“Them’s your sentiments, eh? Then my advice is this: Pitch ’em all overboard—the whole jing-bang of them. Your high-flown notions sink you English greenhorns. Now, when I all but offered you a position under me—”“Under your gardener,” said Archie, smiling. “Well, it’s all the same. I didn’t mean to insult your father’s son. I wanted to know if you had the grit and the go in you.”“I think I’ve both, sir. Father—Squire Broadbent—”“Squire Fiddlestick!”“Sir!”“Go on, lad, never mind me. Your father—”“My father brought me up to work.”“Tossing hay, I suppose, raking flower-beds and such. Well, you’ll find all this different in Australian Bush-life; it is sink or swim there.”“Well, I’m going to swim.”“Bravo, boy!”“And now, sir, do you mean to tell me that brains go for nothing in this land of contrariety?”“No,” cried Winslow, “no, lad. Goodness forbid I should give you that impression. If I had only the gift of the gab, and were a good writer, I’d send stuff to this paper,” (here he struck the sheet that lay on the grass) “that would show men how I felt, and I’d be a member of the legislature in a year’s time. But this is what I say, lad,Brains without legs and arms, and a healthy stomach, are no good here, or very little. We want the two combined; but if either are to be left out, why leave out the brains. There is many an English youth of gentle birth and good education that would make wealth and honour too in this new land of ours, if he could pocket his pride, don a workman’s jacket, and put his shoulder to the wheel. That’s it, d’ye see?”“I think I do.”“That’s right. Now tell me about your uncle. Dear old man! We never had a cross word all the time I sailed with him.”Archie did tell him all, everything, and even gave him his last letter to read.By-and-by Etheldene came back, still leading her exaggerated schoolboy.“Sit down, Mr Cooper, on the grass. That’s the style.”“Well,” cried Archie, laughing, “if everybody is going to squat on the grass, so shall I.”Even Etheldene laughed at this; and when the governess came, and servants with the tea, they found a very happy family indeed.After due introductions, Winslow continued talking to Bob.“That’s it, you see, Mr Cooper; and I’m right glad you’ve come to me for advice. What I don’t know about settling in Bushland isn’t worth knowing, though I say it myself. There are plenty long-headed fellows that have risen to riches very quickly, but I believe, lad, the same men would have made money in their own country. They are the geniuses of finance; fellows with four eyes in their head, and that can look two ways at once. But they are the exception, and the ordinary man needn’t expect such luck, because he won’t get it.“Now there’s yourself, Mr Cooper, and your friend that I haven’t seen; you’ve made a lucky dive at the fields, and you’re tired of gold-digging. I don’t blame you. You want to turn farmer in earnest. On a small scale you are a capitalist. Well, mind, you’re going to play a game, in which the very first movement may settle you for good or evil.“Go to Brisbane. Don’t believe the chaps here. Go straight away up, and take time a bit, and look round. Don’t buy a pig in a poke. Hundreds do. There’s a lot of people whose interest is to sell A1 claims, and a shoal of greenhorns with capital who want to buy. Now listen. Maybe not one of these have any experience. They see speculation in each other’s eyes; and if one makes a grab, the other will try to be before him, and very likely the one that lays hold is hoisted. Let me put it in another way. Hang a hook, with a nice piece of pork on it, overboard where there are sharks. Everyone would like the pork, but everyone is shy and suspicious. Suddenly a shark, with more speculation in his eye than the others, prepares for a rush, and rather than he shall have it all the rest do just the same, and the lucky one gets hoisted. It’s that way with catching capitalists. So I say again, Look before you leap. Don’t run after bargains. They may be good, but— This young fellow here has some knowledge of English farming. Well, that is good in its way, very good; and he has plenty of muscle, and is willing to work, that is better. If he were all alone, I’d tell him to go away to the Bush and shear sheep, build fences, and drive cattle for eighteen months, and keep his eyes wide open, and his ears too, and he’d get some insight into business. As it is, you’re all going together, and you’ll all have a look at things. You’ll see what sort of stock the country is suited for—sheep, or cattle, or both; if it is exposed, or wet, or day, or forest, or all together. And you’ll find out if it be healthy for men and stock, and not ‘sour’ for either; and also you’ll consider what markets are open to you. For there’d be small use in rearing stock you couldn’t sell. See?”“Yes,” said Bob; “I see a lot of difficulties in the way I hadn’t thought of.”“Go warily then, and the difficulties will vanish. I think I’ll go with you to Brisbane,” added Winslow, after a pause. “I’m getting sick already of civilised life.”Etheldene threw her arms round her father’s neck.“Well, birdie, what is it? ’Fraid I go and leave you too long?”“You mustn’t leave me at all, father. I’m sometimes sick of civilised life. I’m going with you wherever you go.”That same evening after dinner, while Etheldene was away somewhere with her new friend—showing him, I think, how to throw the boomerang—Winslow and Archie sat out in the verandah looking at the stars while they sipped their coffee.Winslow had been silent for a time, suddenly he spoke.“I’m going to ask you a strange question, youngster,” he said.“Well, sir?” said Archie.“Suppose I were in a difficulty, from what you have seen of me would you help me out if you could?”“You needn’t ask, sir,” said Archie. “My uncle’s friend.”“Well, a fifty-pound note would do it.”Archie had his uncle’s draft still with him. He never said a word till he had handed it to Winslow, and till this eccentric individual had crumpled it up, and thrust it unceremoniously, and with only a grunt of thanks, into one of his capacious pockets.“But,” said Archie, “I would rather you would not look upon it as a loan. In fact, I am doubting the evidence of my senses. You—with all the show of wealth I see around me—to be in temporary need of a poor, paltry fifty pounds! Verily, sir, this is the land of contrarieties.”Winslow simply laughed.“You have a lot to learn yet,” he said, “my young friend; but I admire your courage, and your generous-heartedness, though not your business habits.”Archie and Bob paid many a visit to Wistaria Grove—the name of Winslow’s place—during the three weeks previous to the start from Sydney.One day, when alone with Archie, Winslow thrust an envelope into his hands.“That’s your fifty pounds,” he said. “Why, count it, lad; don’t stow it away like that. It ain’t business.”“Why,” said Archie, “here are three hundred pounds, not fifty pounds!”“It’s all yours, lad, every penny; and if you don’t put it up I’ll put it in the fire.”“But explain.”“Yes, nothing more easy. You mustn’t be angry. No? Well, then, I knew, from all accounts, you were a chip o’ the old block, and there was no use offending your silly pride by offering to lend you money to buy a morsel of claim, so I simply borrowed yours and put it out for you.”“Put it out for me?”“Yes, that’s it; and the money is honestly increased. Bless your innocence! I could double it in a week. It is making the first thousand pounds that is the difficulty in this country of contrarieties, as you call it.”When Archie told Bob the story that evening, Bob’s answer was:“Well, lad, I knew Winslow was a good-hearted fellow the very first day I saw him. Never you judge a man by his clothes, Archie.”“First impressions certainlyaredeceiving,” said Archie; “and I’m learning something new every day of my life.”“I am going round to Melbourne for a week or two, boys,” said Winslow one day. “Which of you will come with me?”“I’ll stop here,” said Bob, “and stick to business. You had better go, Archie.”“I would like to, if—if I could afford it.”“Now, just look here, young man, you stick that eternal English pride of yours in your pocket. I ask you to come with me as a guest, and if you refuse I’ll throw you overboard. And if, during our journey, I catch you taking your pride, or your purse either, out of your pocket, I’ll never speak another word to you as long as I live.”“All right,” said Archie, laughing; “that settles it. Is Etheldene going too?”“Yes, the child is going. She won’t stay away from her old dad. She hasn’t a mother, poor thing.”Regarding Archie’s visit to Victoria, we must let him speak himself another time; for the scene of our story must now shift.
“You’ll find him a rough stick,” said Archie.
“What, rougher than me or Harry?” said Bob.
“Well, as you’ve put the question I’ll answer you pat. I don’t consider either you or Harry particularly rough. If you’re rough you’re right, Bob, and it is really wonderful what a difference mixing with the world has done for both of you; and if you knew a little more of the rudiments of English grammar, you would pass at a pinch.”
“Thank ye,” said Bob.
“You’ve got a bit of the bur-r-r of Northumbria in your brogue, but I do believe people like it, and Harry isn’t half the Cockney he used to be. But, Bob, this man—I wish I could say gentleman—Winslow never was, and never could be, anything but a shell-back. He puts me in mind of the warty old lobsters one sees crawling in and out among the rocks away down at the point yonder.
“But, oh!” added Archie, “what a little angel the daughter is! Of course she is only a baby. And what a lovely name—Etheldene! Isn’t it sweet, Bob?”
“I don’t know about the sweetness; there is a good mouthful of it, anyhow.”
“Off you go, Bob, and dress. Have you darned those holes in your gloves?”
“No; bought a new pair.”
“Just like your extravagance. Be off!”
Bob Cooper took extra pains with his dressing to-day, and when he appeared at last before his little wife Sarah, she turned him round and round and round three times, partly for luck, and partly to look at him with genuine pride up and down.
“My eye,” she said at last, “you does look stunning! Not a pin in sight, nor a string sticking out anywheres. You’re going to see a young lady, I suppose; but Sarah ain’t jealous of her little man. She likes to see him admired.”
“Yes,” said Bob, laughing; “you’ve hit the nail straight on the head; I am going to see a young lady. She is fourteen year old, I think. But bless your little bobbing bit o’ a heart, lass, it isn’t for her I’m dressed. No; I’m going with t’ young Squire. He may be all the same as us out here, and lets me call him Archie. But what are they out here, after all? Why, only a set o’ whitewashed heathens. No, I must dress for the company I’m in.”
“And the very young lady—?”
“Is a Miss Winslow. I think t’ young Squire is kind o’ gone on her, though sheisonly a baby. Well, good-bye, lass.”
“Good-bye, little man.”
Etheldene ran with smiles and outstretched arms to meet Archie, but drew back when she noticed the immense bearded stranger.
“It’s only Bob,” said Archie. “Is your father in?”
“Yes, and we’re all going to have tea out here under the trees.”
The “all” was not a very large number; only Etheldene’s governess and father, herself, and a girl playmate.
Poor Etheldene’s mother had died in the Bush when she was little more than a baby. The rough life had hardly suited her. And this child had been such a little bushranger from her earliest days that her present appearance, her extreme beauty and gentleness, made another of those wonderful puzzles for which Australia is notorious.
Probably Etheldene knew more about the blacks, with their strange customs and manners, their curious rites and superstitions, and more about the home life of wallabies, kangaroos, dingoes, birds, insects, and every thing that grew wild, than many a professed naturalist; but she had her own names, or names given by blacks, to the trees and to the wild flowers.
While Etheldene, somewhat timidly it must be confessed, was leading big Bob round the gardens and lawns by the hand as if he were a kind of exaggerated schoolboy, and showing him all her pets—animate and inanimate—her ferns and flowers and birds, Winslow himself came upon the scene with theMorning Heraldin his hand. He was dressed—if dressing it could be called—in the same careless manner Archie had last seen him. It must be confessed, however, that this semi-negligent style seemed to suit him. Archie wondered if ever he had worn a necktie in his life, and how he would look in a dress suit. He lounged up with careless ease, and stuck out his great spade of a hand.
Archie remembered he was Etheldene’s father, and shook it.
“Well, youngster, how are you? Bobbish, eh? Ah, I see Ethie has got in tow with a new chum. Your friend? Is he now? Well, that’s the sort of man I like. He’s bound to do well in this country. You ain’t a bad sort yourself, lad; but nothing to that, no more than a young turkey is to an emu. Well, sit down.”
Mr Winslow flung himself on the grass. It might be rather damp, but he dared not trust his weight and bulk on a lawn-chair.
“So your friend’s going to the Bush, and going to take you with him, eh?”
Archie’s proud soul rebelled against this way of talking, but he said nothing. It was evident that Mr Winslow looked upon him as a boy.
“Well, I hope you’ll do right both of you. What prospects have you?”
Archie told him how high his hopes were, and how exalted his notions.
“Them’s your sentiments, eh? Then my advice is this: Pitch ’em all overboard—the whole jing-bang of them. Your high-flown notions sink you English greenhorns. Now, when I all but offered you a position under me—”
“Under your gardener,” said Archie, smiling. “Well, it’s all the same. I didn’t mean to insult your father’s son. I wanted to know if you had the grit and the go in you.”
“I think I’ve both, sir. Father—Squire Broadbent—”
“Squire Fiddlestick!”
“Sir!”
“Go on, lad, never mind me. Your father—”
“My father brought me up to work.”
“Tossing hay, I suppose, raking flower-beds and such. Well, you’ll find all this different in Australian Bush-life; it is sink or swim there.”
“Well, I’m going to swim.”
“Bravo, boy!”
“And now, sir, do you mean to tell me that brains go for nothing in this land of contrariety?”
“No,” cried Winslow, “no, lad. Goodness forbid I should give you that impression. If I had only the gift of the gab, and were a good writer, I’d send stuff to this paper,” (here he struck the sheet that lay on the grass) “that would show men how I felt, and I’d be a member of the legislature in a year’s time. But this is what I say, lad,Brains without legs and arms, and a healthy stomach, are no good here, or very little. We want the two combined; but if either are to be left out, why leave out the brains. There is many an English youth of gentle birth and good education that would make wealth and honour too in this new land of ours, if he could pocket his pride, don a workman’s jacket, and put his shoulder to the wheel. That’s it, d’ye see?”
“I think I do.”
“That’s right. Now tell me about your uncle. Dear old man! We never had a cross word all the time I sailed with him.”
Archie did tell him all, everything, and even gave him his last letter to read.
By-and-by Etheldene came back, still leading her exaggerated schoolboy.
“Sit down, Mr Cooper, on the grass. That’s the style.”
“Well,” cried Archie, laughing, “if everybody is going to squat on the grass, so shall I.”
Even Etheldene laughed at this; and when the governess came, and servants with the tea, they found a very happy family indeed.
After due introductions, Winslow continued talking to Bob.
“That’s it, you see, Mr Cooper; and I’m right glad you’ve come to me for advice. What I don’t know about settling in Bushland isn’t worth knowing, though I say it myself. There are plenty long-headed fellows that have risen to riches very quickly, but I believe, lad, the same men would have made money in their own country. They are the geniuses of finance; fellows with four eyes in their head, and that can look two ways at once. But they are the exception, and the ordinary man needn’t expect such luck, because he won’t get it.
“Now there’s yourself, Mr Cooper, and your friend that I haven’t seen; you’ve made a lucky dive at the fields, and you’re tired of gold-digging. I don’t blame you. You want to turn farmer in earnest. On a small scale you are a capitalist. Well, mind, you’re going to play a game, in which the very first movement may settle you for good or evil.
“Go to Brisbane. Don’t believe the chaps here. Go straight away up, and take time a bit, and look round. Don’t buy a pig in a poke. Hundreds do. There’s a lot of people whose interest is to sell A1 claims, and a shoal of greenhorns with capital who want to buy. Now listen. Maybe not one of these have any experience. They see speculation in each other’s eyes; and if one makes a grab, the other will try to be before him, and very likely the one that lays hold is hoisted. Let me put it in another way. Hang a hook, with a nice piece of pork on it, overboard where there are sharks. Everyone would like the pork, but everyone is shy and suspicious. Suddenly a shark, with more speculation in his eye than the others, prepares for a rush, and rather than he shall have it all the rest do just the same, and the lucky one gets hoisted. It’s that way with catching capitalists. So I say again, Look before you leap. Don’t run after bargains. They may be good, but— This young fellow here has some knowledge of English farming. Well, that is good in its way, very good; and he has plenty of muscle, and is willing to work, that is better. If he were all alone, I’d tell him to go away to the Bush and shear sheep, build fences, and drive cattle for eighteen months, and keep his eyes wide open, and his ears too, and he’d get some insight into business. As it is, you’re all going together, and you’ll all have a look at things. You’ll see what sort of stock the country is suited for—sheep, or cattle, or both; if it is exposed, or wet, or day, or forest, or all together. And you’ll find out if it be healthy for men and stock, and not ‘sour’ for either; and also you’ll consider what markets are open to you. For there’d be small use in rearing stock you couldn’t sell. See?”
“Yes,” said Bob; “I see a lot of difficulties in the way I hadn’t thought of.”
“Go warily then, and the difficulties will vanish. I think I’ll go with you to Brisbane,” added Winslow, after a pause. “I’m getting sick already of civilised life.”
Etheldene threw her arms round her father’s neck.
“Well, birdie, what is it? ’Fraid I go and leave you too long?”
“You mustn’t leave me at all, father. I’m sometimes sick of civilised life. I’m going with you wherever you go.”
That same evening after dinner, while Etheldene was away somewhere with her new friend—showing him, I think, how to throw the boomerang—Winslow and Archie sat out in the verandah looking at the stars while they sipped their coffee.
Winslow had been silent for a time, suddenly he spoke.
“I’m going to ask you a strange question, youngster,” he said.
“Well, sir?” said Archie.
“Suppose I were in a difficulty, from what you have seen of me would you help me out if you could?”
“You needn’t ask, sir,” said Archie. “My uncle’s friend.”
“Well, a fifty-pound note would do it.”
Archie had his uncle’s draft still with him. He never said a word till he had handed it to Winslow, and till this eccentric individual had crumpled it up, and thrust it unceremoniously, and with only a grunt of thanks, into one of his capacious pockets.
“But,” said Archie, “I would rather you would not look upon it as a loan. In fact, I am doubting the evidence of my senses. You—with all the show of wealth I see around me—to be in temporary need of a poor, paltry fifty pounds! Verily, sir, this is the land of contrarieties.”
Winslow simply laughed.
“You have a lot to learn yet,” he said, “my young friend; but I admire your courage, and your generous-heartedness, though not your business habits.”
Archie and Bob paid many a visit to Wistaria Grove—the name of Winslow’s place—during the three weeks previous to the start from Sydney.
One day, when alone with Archie, Winslow thrust an envelope into his hands.
“That’s your fifty pounds,” he said. “Why, count it, lad; don’t stow it away like that. It ain’t business.”
“Why,” said Archie, “here are three hundred pounds, not fifty pounds!”
“It’s all yours, lad, every penny; and if you don’t put it up I’ll put it in the fire.”
“But explain.”
“Yes, nothing more easy. You mustn’t be angry. No? Well, then, I knew, from all accounts, you were a chip o’ the old block, and there was no use offending your silly pride by offering to lend you money to buy a morsel of claim, so I simply borrowed yours and put it out for you.”
“Put it out for me?”
“Yes, that’s it; and the money is honestly increased. Bless your innocence! I could double it in a week. It is making the first thousand pounds that is the difficulty in this country of contrarieties, as you call it.”
When Archie told Bob the story that evening, Bob’s answer was:
“Well, lad, I knew Winslow was a good-hearted fellow the very first day I saw him. Never you judge a man by his clothes, Archie.”
“First impressions certainlyaredeceiving,” said Archie; “and I’m learning something new every day of my life.”
“I am going round to Melbourne for a week or two, boys,” said Winslow one day. “Which of you will come with me?”
“I’ll stop here,” said Bob, “and stick to business. You had better go, Archie.”
“I would like to, if—if I could afford it.”
“Now, just look here, young man, you stick that eternal English pride of yours in your pocket. I ask you to come with me as a guest, and if you refuse I’ll throw you overboard. And if, during our journey, I catch you taking your pride, or your purse either, out of your pocket, I’ll never speak another word to you as long as I live.”
“All right,” said Archie, laughing; “that settles it. Is Etheldene going too?”
“Yes, the child is going. She won’t stay away from her old dad. She hasn’t a mother, poor thing.”
Regarding Archie’s visit to Victoria, we must let him speak himself another time; for the scene of our story must now shift.
Chapter Eighteen.Book III—In the Wild Interior.“In This New Land of Ours.”There was something in the glorious lonesomeness of Bush-life that accorded most completely with Archie’s notions of true happiness and independence. His life now, and the lives of all the three, would be simply what they chose to make them. To use the figurative language of the New Testament, they had “taken hold of the plough,” and they certainly had no intention of “looking back.”Archie felt (this too is figurative) as the mariner may be supposed to feel just leaving his native shore to sail away over the broad, the boundless ocean to far-off lands. His hand is on the tiller; the shore is receding; his eye is aloft, where the sails are bellying out before the wind. There is hardly a sound, save the creaking of the blocks, or rattle of the rudder chains, the joyous ripple of the water, and the screaming of the sea-birds, that seem to sing their farewells. Away ahead is the blue horizon and the heaving sea, but he has faith in his good barque, and faith in his own skill and judgment, and for the time being he is a Viking; he is “monarch of all he surveys.”“Monarch of all he surveys?” Yes; these words are borrowed from the poem on Robinson Crusoe, you remember; that stirring story that so appeals to the heart of every genuine boy.There was something of the Robinson Crusoe element in Archie’s present mode of living, for he and his friends had to rough it in the same delightfully primitive fashion. They had to know and to practise a little of almost every trade under the sun; and while life to the boy—he was really little more—was very real and very earnest, it felt all the time like playing at being a man.But how am I to account for the happiness—nay, even joyfulness—that appeared to be infused in the young man’s very blood and soul? Nay, not appeared to be only, but that actually was—a joyfulness whose effects could at times be actually felt in his very frame and muscle like a proud thrill, that made his steps and tread elastic, and caused him to gaily sing to himself as he went about at his work. May I try to explain this by a little homely experiment, which you yourself may also perform? See, here then I have a small disc of zinc, no larger than a coat button, and I have also a shilling-piece. I place the former on my tongue, and the latter between my lower lip and gum, and lo! the moment I permit the two metallic edges to touch I feel a tingling thrill, and if my eyes be shut I perceive a flash as well. It is electricity passing through the bodily medium—my tongue. The one coin becomesen rapport, so to speak, with the other. So in like manner was Archie’s soul within himen rapportwith all the light, the life, the love he saw around him, his body being but the wholesome, healthy, solid medium.En rapportwith the light. Why, by day this was everywhere—in the sky during its midday blue brightness; in the clouds so gorgeously painted that lay over the hills at early morning, or over the wooded horizon near eventide.En rapportwith the light dancing and shimmering in the pool down yonder; playing among the wild flowers that grew everywhere in wanton luxuriance; flickering through the tree-tops, despite the trailing creepers; gleaming through the tender greens of fern fronds in cool places; sporting with the strange fantastic, but brightly-coloured orchids; turning greys to white, and browns to bronze; warming, wooing, beautifying all things—the light, the lovely light.En rapportwith the life. Ay, there it was. Where was it not? In the air, where myriads of insects dance and buzz and sing and poise hawk-like above flowers, as if inhaling their sweetness, or dart hither and thither in their zigzag course, and almost with the speed of lightning; where monster beetles go droning lazily round, as if uncertain where to alight; where moths, like painted fans, hover in the sunshine, or fold their wings and go to sleep on flower-tops. In the forests, where birds, like animated blossoms, living chips of dazzling colours, hop from boughs, climb stems, run along silvery bark on trees, hopping, jumping, tapping, talking, chattering, screaming, with bills that move and throats that heave even when their voices cannot be heard in the feathered babel. Life on the ground, where thousands of busy beetles creep, or play hide-and-seek among the stems of tall grass, and where ants innumerable go in search of what they somehow never seem to find. Life on the water slowly sailing round, or in and out among the reeds, in the form of bonnie velvet ducks and pretty spangled teal. Life in the water, where shoals of fish dart hither and thither, or rest for a moment in shallows to bask in the sun, their bodies all a-quiver with enjoyment. Life in the sky itself, high up. Behold that splendid flock of wonga-wonga pigeons, with bronzen wings, that seem to shake the sunshine off them in showers of silver and gold, or, lower down, that mob of snowy-breasted cockatoos, going somewhere to do something, no doubt, and making a dreadful din about it, but quite a sight, if only from the glints of lily and rose that appear in the white of their outstretched wings and tails. Life everywhere.En rapportwith all the love around him. Yes, for it is spring here, though the autumn tints are on the trees in groves and woods at Burley. Deep down in the forest yonder, if you could penetrate without your clothes being torn from your back, you might listen to the soft murmur of the doves that stand by their nests in the green gloom of fig trees; you would linger long to note the love passages taking place among the cosy wee, bright, and bonnie parrakeets; you would observe the hawk flying silently, sullenly, home to his castle in the inaccessible heights of the gum trees, but you would go quickly past the forest dens of lively cockatoos. For everywhere it is spring with birds and beasts. They have dressed in their gayest; they have assumed their fondest notes and cries; they live and breathe and buzz in an atmosphere of happiness and love.Well, it was spring with Nature, and it was spring in Archie’s heart.Work was a pleasure to him.That last sentence really deserves a line to itself. Without the ghost of an intention to moralise, I must be permitted to say, that the youth who finds an undoubted pleasure in working is sure to get on in Australia. There is that in the clear, pure, dry air of the back Bush which renders inactivity an impossibility to anyone except ne’er-do-wells and born idiots. This is putting it strongly, but it is also putting it truthfully.Archie felt he had done with Sydney, for a time at all events, when he left. He was not sorry to shake the dust of the city from his half-wellingtons as he embarked on theCanny Scotia, bound for Brisbane.If the Winslows had not been among the passengers he certainly would have given vent to a sigh or two.All for the sake of sweet little Etheldene? Yes, for her sake. Was she not going to be Rupert’s wife, and his own second sister? Oh, he had it all nicely arranged, all cut and dry, I can assure you!Here is a funny thing, but it is also a fact. The very day that theCanny Scotiawas to sail, Archie took Harry with him, and the two started through the city, and bore up for the shop of Mr Glorie.They entered. It was like entering a gloomy vault. Nothing was altered. There stood the rows on rows of dusty bottles, with their dingy gilt labels; the dusty mahogany drawers; the morsel of railinged desk with its curtain of dirty red; there were the murky windows with their bottles of crusted yellows and reds; and up there the identical spider still working away at his dismal web, still living in hopes apparently of some day being able to catch a fly.The melancholy-looking new apprentice, who had doubtless paid the new premium, a long lantern-jawed lad with great eyes in hollow sockets, and a blue-grey face, stood looking at the pair of them.“Where is your master, Mr—?”“Mr Myers, sir. Myers is my name.”“Where is Mr Glorie, Mr Myers?”“D’ye wish to see’m, sir?”“Don’t it seem like it?” cried Harry, who for the life of him “could not help putting his oar in.”“Master’s at the back, among—the soap.”He droned out the last words in such a lugubrious tone that Archie felt sorry for him.Just then, thinking perhaps he scented a customer, Mr Glorie himself entered, all apron from the jaws to the knees.“Ah! Mr Glorie,” cried Archie. “I really couldn’t leave Sydney without saying ta-ta, and expressing my sorrow for breaking—”“Your indenture, young sir?”“No; I’m glad I broke that. I mean the oil-jar. Here is a sovereign towards it, and I hope there’s no bad feeling.”“Oh, no, not in the least, and thank you, sir, kindly!”“Well, good-bye. Good-bye Mr Myers. If ever I return from the Bush I’ll come back and see you.”And away they went, and away went Archie’s feeling of gloom as soon as he got to the sunny side of the street.“I say,” said Harry, “that’s a lively coon behind the counter. Looks to me like a love-sick bandicoot, or a consumptive kangaroo. But don’t you know there is such a thing as being too honest? Now that old death-and-glory chap robbed you, and had it been me, and I’d called again, it would have been to kick him. But you’re still the old Johnnie.”Now if I were writing all this tale from imagination, instead of sketching the life and struggles of a real live laddie, I should have ascended into the realms of romance, and made a kind of hero of him thus: he should have gone straight away to the bank when he received that 50 pounds from his uncle, and sent it back, and then gone off to the bush with twopence halfpenny in his pocket, engaged himself to a squatter as under-man, and worked his way right up to the pinnacle of fortune.But Archie had not done that; and between you and me and the binnacle, not to let it go any further, I think he did an extremely sensible thing in sticking to the money.Oh, but plenty of young men who do not have uncles to send them fifty-pound notes to help them over their first failures, do very well without such assistance! So let no intending emigrant be disheartened.Again, as to Winslow’s wild way of borrowing said 50 pounds, and changing it into 300 pounds, that was another “fluke,” and a sort of thing that might never happen again in a hundred years.Pride did come in again, however, with a jump—with a gay Northumbrian bound—when Bob and Harry seriously proposed that Johnnie, as the latter still called him, should put his money in the pool, and share and share alike with them.“No, no, no,” said the young Squire, “don’t rile me; that would be so obviously unfair toyou, that it would be unfair tomyself.”When asked to explain this seeming paradox, he added:“Because it would rob me of my feeling of independence.”So the matter ended.But through the long-headed kindness and business tact of Winslow, all three succeeded in getting farms that adjoined, though Archie’s was but a patch compared to the united great farms of his chums, that stretched to a goodly two thousand acres and more, with land beyond to take up as pasture.But then there was stock to buy, and tools, and all kinds of things, to say nothing of men’s and boys’ wages to be paid, and arms and ammunition to help to fill the larder.At this time the railway did not go sweeping away so far west as it does now, the colony being very much younger, and considerably rougher; and the farms lay on the edge of the Darling Downs.This was a great advantage, as it gave them the run of the markets without having to pay nearly as much in transit and freight as the stock was worth.They had another advantage in their selection—thanks once more to Winslow—they had Bush still farther to the west of them. Not adjacent, to be sure, but near enough to make a shift of stock to grass lands, that could be had for an old song, as the saying is.The selection was procured under better conditions than I believe it is to be had to-day; for the rent was only about ninepence an acre, and that for twenty years, the whole payable at any time in order to obtain complete possession.(At present agricultural farms may be selected of not more than 1280 acres, and the rent is fixed by the Land Board, not being less than threepence per acre per annum. A licence is issued to the selector, who must, within five years, fence in the land or make permanent improvements of a value equal to the cost of the fence, and must also live on the selection. If at the end of that time he can prove that he has performed the above conditions, he will be entitled to a transferable lease for fifty years. The rent for the first ten years will be the amount as at first fixed, and the rent for every subsequent period of five years will be determined by the Land Board, but the greatest increase that can be made at any re-assessment is fifty per cent.)It must not be imagined that this new home of theirs was a land flowing with milk and honey, or that they had nothing earthly to do but till the ground, sow seed, and live happy ever after. Indeed the work to be performed was all earthly, and the milk and honey had all to come.A deal of the very best land in Australia is covered with woods and forests, and clearing has to be done.Bob wished his busy little body of a wife to stay behind in Brisbane till he had some kind of a decent crib, as he called it, ready to invite her to.But Sarah said, “No! Where you go I go. Your crib shall be my crib, Bob, and I shall bake the damper.” This was not very poetical language, but there was a good deal of sound sense about Sarah, even if there was but little poetry.Well, it did seem at first a disheartening kind of wilderness they had come to, but the site for the homesteads had been previously selected, and after a night’s rest in their rude tents and waggons, work was commenced. Right joyfully too,—“Down with them! Down with the lords of the forests.”This was the song of our pioneers. Men shouted and talked, and laughed and joked, saws rasped and axes rang, and all the while duty went merrily on. Birds find beasts, never disturbed before in the solitude of their homes, except by wandering blacks, crowded round—only keeping a safe distance away—and wondered whatever the matter could be. The musical magpies, or laughing jackasses, said they would soon settle the business; they would frighten those new chums out of their wits, and out of the woods. So they started to do it. They laughed in such loud, discordant, daft tones that at times Archie was obliged to put his fingers in his ears, and guns had to be fired to stop the row. So they were not successful. The cockatoos tried the same game; they cackled and skraighed like a million mad hens, and rustled and ruffled their plumage, and flapped their wings and flew, but all to no purpose—the work went on.The beautiful lorries, parrakeets, and budgerigars took little notice of the intruders, but went farther away, deserting half-built nests to build new ones. The bonnie little long-tailed opossum peeped down from his perch on the gums, looking exceedingly wise, and told his wife that not in all his experience had there been such goings on in the forest lands, and that something was sure to follow it; his wife might mark his words for that. The wonga-wongas grumbled dreadfully; but great hawks flew high in the air, swooping round and round against the sun, as they have a habit of doing, and now and then gave vent to a shrill cry which was more of exultation than anything else. “There will be dead bones to pick before long.” That is what the hawks thought. Snakes now and then got angrily up, puffed and blew a bit, but immediately decamped into the denser cover.The dingoes kept their minds to themselves until night fell, and the stars came out; the constellation called the Southern Cross spangled the heaven’s dark blue, then the dingoes lifted up their voices and wept; and, oh, such weeping! Whoso has never heard a concert of Australian wild dogs can have no conception of the noise these animals are capable of. Whoso has once heard it, and gone to sleep towards the end of it, will never afterwards complain of the harmless musical reunions of our London cats.But sleep is often impossible. You have got just to lie in bed and wonder what in the name of mystery they do it for. They seem to quarrel over the key-note, and lose it, and try for it, and get it again, and again go off into a chorus that would “ding doon” Tantallan Castle. And when you do doze off at last, as likely as not, you will dream of howling winds and hungry wolves till it is grey daylight in the morning.
There was something in the glorious lonesomeness of Bush-life that accorded most completely with Archie’s notions of true happiness and independence. His life now, and the lives of all the three, would be simply what they chose to make them. To use the figurative language of the New Testament, they had “taken hold of the plough,” and they certainly had no intention of “looking back.”
Archie felt (this too is figurative) as the mariner may be supposed to feel just leaving his native shore to sail away over the broad, the boundless ocean to far-off lands. His hand is on the tiller; the shore is receding; his eye is aloft, where the sails are bellying out before the wind. There is hardly a sound, save the creaking of the blocks, or rattle of the rudder chains, the joyous ripple of the water, and the screaming of the sea-birds, that seem to sing their farewells. Away ahead is the blue horizon and the heaving sea, but he has faith in his good barque, and faith in his own skill and judgment, and for the time being he is a Viking; he is “monarch of all he surveys.”
“Monarch of all he surveys?” Yes; these words are borrowed from the poem on Robinson Crusoe, you remember; that stirring story that so appeals to the heart of every genuine boy.
There was something of the Robinson Crusoe element in Archie’s present mode of living, for he and his friends had to rough it in the same delightfully primitive fashion. They had to know and to practise a little of almost every trade under the sun; and while life to the boy—he was really little more—was very real and very earnest, it felt all the time like playing at being a man.
But how am I to account for the happiness—nay, even joyfulness—that appeared to be infused in the young man’s very blood and soul? Nay, not appeared to be only, but that actually was—a joyfulness whose effects could at times be actually felt in his very frame and muscle like a proud thrill, that made his steps and tread elastic, and caused him to gaily sing to himself as he went about at his work. May I try to explain this by a little homely experiment, which you yourself may also perform? See, here then I have a small disc of zinc, no larger than a coat button, and I have also a shilling-piece. I place the former on my tongue, and the latter between my lower lip and gum, and lo! the moment I permit the two metallic edges to touch I feel a tingling thrill, and if my eyes be shut I perceive a flash as well. It is electricity passing through the bodily medium—my tongue. The one coin becomesen rapport, so to speak, with the other. So in like manner was Archie’s soul within himen rapportwith all the light, the life, the love he saw around him, his body being but the wholesome, healthy, solid medium.
En rapportwith the light. Why, by day this was everywhere—in the sky during its midday blue brightness; in the clouds so gorgeously painted that lay over the hills at early morning, or over the wooded horizon near eventide.En rapportwith the light dancing and shimmering in the pool down yonder; playing among the wild flowers that grew everywhere in wanton luxuriance; flickering through the tree-tops, despite the trailing creepers; gleaming through the tender greens of fern fronds in cool places; sporting with the strange fantastic, but brightly-coloured orchids; turning greys to white, and browns to bronze; warming, wooing, beautifying all things—the light, the lovely light.En rapportwith the life. Ay, there it was. Where was it not? In the air, where myriads of insects dance and buzz and sing and poise hawk-like above flowers, as if inhaling their sweetness, or dart hither and thither in their zigzag course, and almost with the speed of lightning; where monster beetles go droning lazily round, as if uncertain where to alight; where moths, like painted fans, hover in the sunshine, or fold their wings and go to sleep on flower-tops. In the forests, where birds, like animated blossoms, living chips of dazzling colours, hop from boughs, climb stems, run along silvery bark on trees, hopping, jumping, tapping, talking, chattering, screaming, with bills that move and throats that heave even when their voices cannot be heard in the feathered babel. Life on the ground, where thousands of busy beetles creep, or play hide-and-seek among the stems of tall grass, and where ants innumerable go in search of what they somehow never seem to find. Life on the water slowly sailing round, or in and out among the reeds, in the form of bonnie velvet ducks and pretty spangled teal. Life in the water, where shoals of fish dart hither and thither, or rest for a moment in shallows to bask in the sun, their bodies all a-quiver with enjoyment. Life in the sky itself, high up. Behold that splendid flock of wonga-wonga pigeons, with bronzen wings, that seem to shake the sunshine off them in showers of silver and gold, or, lower down, that mob of snowy-breasted cockatoos, going somewhere to do something, no doubt, and making a dreadful din about it, but quite a sight, if only from the glints of lily and rose that appear in the white of their outstretched wings and tails. Life everywhere.
En rapportwith all the love around him. Yes, for it is spring here, though the autumn tints are on the trees in groves and woods at Burley. Deep down in the forest yonder, if you could penetrate without your clothes being torn from your back, you might listen to the soft murmur of the doves that stand by their nests in the green gloom of fig trees; you would linger long to note the love passages taking place among the cosy wee, bright, and bonnie parrakeets; you would observe the hawk flying silently, sullenly, home to his castle in the inaccessible heights of the gum trees, but you would go quickly past the forest dens of lively cockatoos. For everywhere it is spring with birds and beasts. They have dressed in their gayest; they have assumed their fondest notes and cries; they live and breathe and buzz in an atmosphere of happiness and love.
Well, it was spring with Nature, and it was spring in Archie’s heart.
Work was a pleasure to him.
That last sentence really deserves a line to itself. Without the ghost of an intention to moralise, I must be permitted to say, that the youth who finds an undoubted pleasure in working is sure to get on in Australia. There is that in the clear, pure, dry air of the back Bush which renders inactivity an impossibility to anyone except ne’er-do-wells and born idiots. This is putting it strongly, but it is also putting it truthfully.
Archie felt he had done with Sydney, for a time at all events, when he left. He was not sorry to shake the dust of the city from his half-wellingtons as he embarked on theCanny Scotia, bound for Brisbane.
If the Winslows had not been among the passengers he certainly would have given vent to a sigh or two.
All for the sake of sweet little Etheldene? Yes, for her sake. Was she not going to be Rupert’s wife, and his own second sister? Oh, he had it all nicely arranged, all cut and dry, I can assure you!
Here is a funny thing, but it is also a fact. The very day that theCanny Scotiawas to sail, Archie took Harry with him, and the two started through the city, and bore up for the shop of Mr Glorie.
They entered. It was like entering a gloomy vault. Nothing was altered. There stood the rows on rows of dusty bottles, with their dingy gilt labels; the dusty mahogany drawers; the morsel of railinged desk with its curtain of dirty red; there were the murky windows with their bottles of crusted yellows and reds; and up there the identical spider still working away at his dismal web, still living in hopes apparently of some day being able to catch a fly.
The melancholy-looking new apprentice, who had doubtless paid the new premium, a long lantern-jawed lad with great eyes in hollow sockets, and a blue-grey face, stood looking at the pair of them.
“Where is your master, Mr—?”
“Mr Myers, sir. Myers is my name.”
“Where is Mr Glorie, Mr Myers?”
“D’ye wish to see’m, sir?”
“Don’t it seem like it?” cried Harry, who for the life of him “could not help putting his oar in.”
“Master’s at the back, among—the soap.”
He droned out the last words in such a lugubrious tone that Archie felt sorry for him.
Just then, thinking perhaps he scented a customer, Mr Glorie himself entered, all apron from the jaws to the knees.
“Ah! Mr Glorie,” cried Archie. “I really couldn’t leave Sydney without saying ta-ta, and expressing my sorrow for breaking—”
“Your indenture, young sir?”
“No; I’m glad I broke that. I mean the oil-jar. Here is a sovereign towards it, and I hope there’s no bad feeling.”
“Oh, no, not in the least, and thank you, sir, kindly!”
“Well, good-bye. Good-bye Mr Myers. If ever I return from the Bush I’ll come back and see you.”
And away they went, and away went Archie’s feeling of gloom as soon as he got to the sunny side of the street.
“I say,” said Harry, “that’s a lively coon behind the counter. Looks to me like a love-sick bandicoot, or a consumptive kangaroo. But don’t you know there is such a thing as being too honest? Now that old death-and-glory chap robbed you, and had it been me, and I’d called again, it would have been to kick him. But you’re still the old Johnnie.”
Now if I were writing all this tale from imagination, instead of sketching the life and struggles of a real live laddie, I should have ascended into the realms of romance, and made a kind of hero of him thus: he should have gone straight away to the bank when he received that 50 pounds from his uncle, and sent it back, and then gone off to the bush with twopence halfpenny in his pocket, engaged himself to a squatter as under-man, and worked his way right up to the pinnacle of fortune.
But Archie had not done that; and between you and me and the binnacle, not to let it go any further, I think he did an extremely sensible thing in sticking to the money.
Oh, but plenty of young men who do not have uncles to send them fifty-pound notes to help them over their first failures, do very well without such assistance! So let no intending emigrant be disheartened.
Again, as to Winslow’s wild way of borrowing said 50 pounds, and changing it into 300 pounds, that was another “fluke,” and a sort of thing that might never happen again in a hundred years.
Pride did come in again, however, with a jump—with a gay Northumbrian bound—when Bob and Harry seriously proposed that Johnnie, as the latter still called him, should put his money in the pool, and share and share alike with them.
“No, no, no,” said the young Squire, “don’t rile me; that would be so obviously unfair toyou, that it would be unfair tomyself.”
When asked to explain this seeming paradox, he added:
“Because it would rob me of my feeling of independence.”
So the matter ended.
But through the long-headed kindness and business tact of Winslow, all three succeeded in getting farms that adjoined, though Archie’s was but a patch compared to the united great farms of his chums, that stretched to a goodly two thousand acres and more, with land beyond to take up as pasture.
But then there was stock to buy, and tools, and all kinds of things, to say nothing of men’s and boys’ wages to be paid, and arms and ammunition to help to fill the larder.
At this time the railway did not go sweeping away so far west as it does now, the colony being very much younger, and considerably rougher; and the farms lay on the edge of the Darling Downs.
This was a great advantage, as it gave them the run of the markets without having to pay nearly as much in transit and freight as the stock was worth.
They had another advantage in their selection—thanks once more to Winslow—they had Bush still farther to the west of them. Not adjacent, to be sure, but near enough to make a shift of stock to grass lands, that could be had for an old song, as the saying is.
The selection was procured under better conditions than I believe it is to be had to-day; for the rent was only about ninepence an acre, and that for twenty years, the whole payable at any time in order to obtain complete possession.
(At present agricultural farms may be selected of not more than 1280 acres, and the rent is fixed by the Land Board, not being less than threepence per acre per annum. A licence is issued to the selector, who must, within five years, fence in the land or make permanent improvements of a value equal to the cost of the fence, and must also live on the selection. If at the end of that time he can prove that he has performed the above conditions, he will be entitled to a transferable lease for fifty years. The rent for the first ten years will be the amount as at first fixed, and the rent for every subsequent period of five years will be determined by the Land Board, but the greatest increase that can be made at any re-assessment is fifty per cent.)
It must not be imagined that this new home of theirs was a land flowing with milk and honey, or that they had nothing earthly to do but till the ground, sow seed, and live happy ever after. Indeed the work to be performed was all earthly, and the milk and honey had all to come.
A deal of the very best land in Australia is covered with woods and forests, and clearing has to be done.
Bob wished his busy little body of a wife to stay behind in Brisbane till he had some kind of a decent crib, as he called it, ready to invite her to.
But Sarah said, “No! Where you go I go. Your crib shall be my crib, Bob, and I shall bake the damper.” This was not very poetical language, but there was a good deal of sound sense about Sarah, even if there was but little poetry.
Well, it did seem at first a disheartening kind of wilderness they had come to, but the site for the homesteads had been previously selected, and after a night’s rest in their rude tents and waggons, work was commenced. Right joyfully too,—
“Down with them! Down with the lords of the forests.”
This was the song of our pioneers. Men shouted and talked, and laughed and joked, saws rasped and axes rang, and all the while duty went merrily on. Birds find beasts, never disturbed before in the solitude of their homes, except by wandering blacks, crowded round—only keeping a safe distance away—and wondered whatever the matter could be. The musical magpies, or laughing jackasses, said they would soon settle the business; they would frighten those new chums out of their wits, and out of the woods. So they started to do it. They laughed in such loud, discordant, daft tones that at times Archie was obliged to put his fingers in his ears, and guns had to be fired to stop the row. So they were not successful. The cockatoos tried the same game; they cackled and skraighed like a million mad hens, and rustled and ruffled their plumage, and flapped their wings and flew, but all to no purpose—the work went on.
The beautiful lorries, parrakeets, and budgerigars took little notice of the intruders, but went farther away, deserting half-built nests to build new ones. The bonnie little long-tailed opossum peeped down from his perch on the gums, looking exceedingly wise, and told his wife that not in all his experience had there been such goings on in the forest lands, and that something was sure to follow it; his wife might mark his words for that. The wonga-wongas grumbled dreadfully; but great hawks flew high in the air, swooping round and round against the sun, as they have a habit of doing, and now and then gave vent to a shrill cry which was more of exultation than anything else. “There will be dead bones to pick before long.” That is what the hawks thought. Snakes now and then got angrily up, puffed and blew a bit, but immediately decamped into the denser cover.
The dingoes kept their minds to themselves until night fell, and the stars came out; the constellation called the Southern Cross spangled the heaven’s dark blue, then the dingoes lifted up their voices and wept; and, oh, such weeping! Whoso has never heard a concert of Australian wild dogs can have no conception of the noise these animals are capable of. Whoso has once heard it, and gone to sleep towards the end of it, will never afterwards complain of the harmless musical reunions of our London cats.
But sleep is often impossible. You have got just to lie in bed and wonder what in the name of mystery they do it for. They seem to quarrel over the key-note, and lose it, and try for it, and get it again, and again go off into a chorus that would “ding doon” Tantallan Castle. And when you do doze off at last, as likely as not, you will dream of howling winds and hungry wolves till it is grey daylight in the morning.
Chapter Nineteen.Burley New Farm.There was so much to be done before things could be got “straight” on the new station, that the days and weeks flew by at a wonderful pace. I pity the man or boy who is reduced to the expedient of killing time. Why if one is only pleasantly and usefully occupied, or engaged in interesting pursuits, time kills itself, and we wonder where it has gone to.If I were to enter into a minute description of the setting-up of the stock and agricultural farm, chapter after chapter would have to be written, and still I should not have finished. I do not think it would be unprofitable reading either, nor such as one would feel inclined to skip. But as there are a deal of different ways of building and furnishing new places the plan adopted by the three friends might not be considered the best after all. Besides, improvements are taking place every day even in Bush-life. However, in the free-and-easy life one leads in the Bush one soon learns to feel quite independent of the finer arts of the upholsterer.In that last sentence I have used the adjective “easy;” but please to observe it is adjoined to another hyphenically, and becomes one with it—“free-and-easy.” There is really very little ease in the Bush. Nor does a man want it or care for it—he goes there to work. Loafers had best keep to cities and to city life, and look for theirlittleenjoyments in parks and gardens by day, in smoke-filled billiard-rooms or glaringly-lighted music-halls by night, go to bed at midnight, and make a late breakfast on rusks and soda-water. We citizens of the woods and wilds do not envy them. We go to bed with the birds, or soon after. We go to sleep, no matter how hard our couches may be; and we do sleep too, and wake with clear heads and clean tongues, and after breakfast feel that nothing in the world will be a comfort to us but work. Yes, men work in the Bush; and, strange to say, though they go there young, they do not appear to grow quickly old. Grey hairs may come, and Nature may do a bit of etching on their brows and around their eyes with the pencil of time, but this does not make an atom of difference to their brains and hearts. These get a trifle tougher, that is all, but no older.Well, of the three friends I think Archie made the best Bushman, though Bob came next, then Harry, who really had developed his powers of mind and body wonderfully, which only just proves that there is nothing after all, even for a Cockney, like rubbing shoulders against a rough world.A dozen times a week at least Archie mentally thanked his father for having taught him to work at home, and for the training he had received in riding to hounds, in tramping over the fields and moors with Branson, in gaining practical knowledge at the barn-yards, and last, though not least, in the good, honest, useful groundwork of education received from his tutor Walton.There was something else that Archie never failed to feel thankful to heaven for, and that was the education his mother had given him.Remember this: Archie was but a rough, harum-scarum kind of a British boy at best, and religious teaching might have fallen on his soul as water falls on a duck’s back, to use a homely phrase. But as a boy he had lived in an atmosphere of refinement. He constantly breathed it till he became imbued with it; and he received the influence also second-hand, or by reflection, from his brother Rupert and his sister.Often and often in the Bush, around the log fire of an evening, did Archie speak proudly of that beloved twain to his companions. His language really had, at times, a smack of real, downright innocence about it, as when he said to Bob once: “Mind you, Bob, I never was what you might call good. I said, and do say, my prayers, and all the like of that; but Roup and Elsie were so high above me that, after coming in from a day’s work or a day on the hill, it used to be like going into church on a week-day to enter the green parlour. I felt my own mental weakness, and I tried to put off my soul’s roughness with my dirty boots in the kitchen.”But Archie was now an excellent superintendent of work. He knew when things were being well done, and he determined they should be. Nothing riled him more than an attempt on the part of any of the men to take advantage of him.They soon came to know him; not as a tyrant, but simply as one who would have things rightly done, and who knew when theywerebeing rightly done, even if it were only so apparently simple a matter as planting a fence-post; for there is a right way and a wrong way of doing that.The men spoke of him as the young Boss. Harry being ignored in all matters that required field-knowledge.“We don’t want nary a plumbline,” said a man once, “when the young Boss’s around. He carries a plumbline in his eye.”Archie never let any man know when he was angry; but they knew afterwards, however, that he had been so from the consequences. Yet with all his strictness he was kind-hearted, and very just. He had the happy gift of being able to put himself in the servant’s place while judging betwixt man and master.Communications were constantly kept up between the station and the railway, by means of waggons, or drays and saddle-horses. Among the servants were several young blacks. These were useful in many ways, and faithful enough; but required keeping in their places. To be in any way familiar with them was to lose their respect, and they were not of much consequence after that. When completed, the homestead itself was certainly not devoid of comfort, though everything was of the homeliest construction; for no large amount of money was spent in getting it up. A Scotchman would describe it as consisting of “twa butts and a ben,” with a wing at the back. The capital letter L, laid down longways thus—I will give you some notion of its shape. There were two doors in front, and four windows, and a backdoor in the after wing, also having windows. The wing portion of the house contained the kitchen and general sitting-room; the right hand portion the best rooms, ladies’ room included, but a door and passage communicated with these and the kitchen.This house was wholly built of sawn wood, but finished inside with lath and plaster, and harled outside, so that when roofed over with those slabs of wood, such as we see some old-English church steeples made of, called “shingles,” the building was almost picturesque. All the more so because it was built on high ground, and trees were left around and near it.The kitchen and wing werepar excellencethe bachelor apartments, of an evening at all events.Every thing that was necessary in the way of furnishing found its way into the homestead of Burley New Farm; but nothing else, with the exception of that of the guests’-room. Of this more anon.The living-house was completed first; but all the time that this was being built men were very busy on the clearings, and the sites were mapped out for the large wool-shed, with huge adjoining yards, where the sheep at shearing-time would be received and seen to.There were also the whole paraphernalia and buildings constituting the cattle and horse-yards, a killing and milking-yard; and behind these were slab huts, roofed with huge pieces of bark, rudely but most artistically fixed, for the men.These last had fire-places, and though wholly built of wood, there was no danger of fire, the chimneys being of stone.Most of the yards and outhouses were separate from each other, and the whole steading was built on elevated ground, the store-hut being not far from the main or dwelling-house.I hardly know what to liken the contents of this store, or the inside of the place itself, to. Not unlike perhaps the half-deck or fore-cabin of a Greenland ship on the day when stores are being doled out to the men. Or, to come nearer home, if ever the reader has been in a remote and rough part of our own country, say Wales or Scotland, where gangs of navvies have been encamped for a time, at a spot where a new line of railway is being pushed through a gully or glen.Just take a peep inside. There is a short counter of the rudest description, on which stand scales and weights, measures and knives. Larger scales stand on the floor, and everywhere around you are heaps of stores, of every useful kind you could possibly name or imagine, and these are best divided into four classes—eatables, wearables, luxuries, and tools.Harry is at home here, and he has managed to infuse a kind of regularity into the place, and takes a sort of pride in knowing where all his wares are stored. The various departments are kept separate. Yonder, for instance, stand the tea, coffee, and cocoa-nibs, and near them the sugar of two kinds, the bags of flour, the cheeses (in boxes), the salt (in casks), soda, soap, and last, but not least, the tobacco and spirits; this last in a place by itself, and well out of harm’s way. Then there is oil and candles—by-and-bye they will make these on the farm—matches—and this brings us to the luxuries—mustard, pepper of various sorts, vinegar, pickles, curry, potted salmon, and meats of many kinds, and bags of rice. Next there is a small store of medicines of the simplest, not to say roughest, sorts, both for man and beast, and rough bandages of flannel and cotton, with a bundle of splints.Then comes clothing of all kinds—hats, shirts, jackets, boots, shoes, etc. Then tools and cooking utensils; and in a private cupboard, quite away in a corner, the ammunition.It is unnecessary to add that harness and horse-shoes found a place in this store, or that a desk stood in one corner where account-books were kept, for the men did not invariably pay down on the nail.I think it said a good deal for Sarah’s courage that she came right away down into the Bush with her “little man,” and took charge of the cooking department on the station, when it was little, if any, better than simply a camp, with waggons for bedrooms, and a morsel of canvas for gentility’s sake.But please to pop your head inside the kitchen, now that the dwelling-house has been up for some little time. Before you reach the door you will have to do a bit of stepping, for outside nothing is tidied up as yet. Heaps of chips, heaps of stones and sticks and builders’ rubbish, are everywhere. Even when you get inside there is a new smell—a limy odour—to greet you in the passage, but in the kitchen itself all is order and neatness. A huge dresser stands against the wall just under the window. The legs of it are a bit rough to be sure, but nobody here is likely to be hypercritical; and when the dinner-hour arrives, instead of the vegetables, meat, and odds-and-ends that now stand thereon, plates, and even knives and forks, will be neatly placed in a row, and Sarah herself, her cooking apron replaced by a neater and nattier one, will take the head of the table, one of the boys will say a shy kind of grace, and the meal will go merrily on.On a shelf, slightly raised above the floor, stand rows of clean saucepans, stewpans, and a big, family-looking business of a frying-pan; and on the wall hang bright, shining dish-covers, and a couple of racks and shelves laden with delf.A good fire of logs burns on the low hearth, and there, among ashes pulled on one side for the purpose, a genuine “damper” is baking, while from a movable “sway” depends a chain and crook, on which latter hangs a pot. This contains corned beef—very well, call itsaltif you please. Anyhow, when Sarah lifts the lid to stick a fork into the boiling mess an odour escapes and pervades the kitchen quite appetising enough to make the teeth of a Bushman water, if he had done anything like a morning’s work. There is another pot close by the fire, and in this sweet potatoes are boiling.It is a warm spring day, and the big window is open to admit the air, else poor Sarah would be feeling rather uncomfortable.What is “damper”? It is simply a huge, thick cake or loaf, made from extremely well-kneaded dough, and baked in the hot ashes of the hearth. Like making good oat cakes, before a person can manufacture a “damper” properly, he must be in a measure to the manner born. There is a deal in the mixing of the dough, and much in the method of firing, and, after all, some people do not care for the article at all, most useful and handy and even edible though it be. But I daresay there are individuals to be found in the world who would turn up their noses at good oat cake. Ah, well, it is really surprising what the air of the Australian Bush does in the way of increasing one’s appetite and destroying fastidiousness.But it is near the dinner-hour, and right nimbly Sarah serves it up; and she has just time to lave her face and hands, and change her apron, when in comes Bob, followed by Archie and Harry. Before he sits down Bob catches hold of Sarah by both hands, and looks admiringly into her face, and ends by giving her rosy cheek a kiss, which resounds through the kitchen rafters like the sound of a cattle-man’s whip.“I declare, Sarah lass,” he says heartily, “you are getting prettier and prettier every day. Now at this very moment your lips and cheeks are as red as peonies, and your eyes sparkle as brightly as a young kangaroo’s; and if any man a stone heavier than myself will make bold to say that I did wrong to marry you on a week’s courtship, I’ll kick him over the river and across the creek. ‘For what we are about to receive, the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’ Sit in, boys, and fire away. This beef is delightful. I like to see the red juice following the knife; and the sweet potatoes taste well, if they don’t look pretty. What, Sarah, too much done? Not a bit o’ them.”The creek that Bob talked about kicking somebody across was a kind of strath or glen not very far from the steading, and lying below it, green and luxuriant at present. It wound away up and down the country for miles, and in the centre of it was a stream or river or burn, well clothed on its banks with bush, and opening out here and there into little lakes or pools. This stream was—so old Bushmen said—never known to run dry.In the winter time it would at times well merit the name of river, especially when after a storm a “spate” came down, with a bore perhaps feet high, carrying along in its dreadful rush tree trunks, rocks, pieces of bank—everything, in fact, that came in its way, or attempted to withstand its giant power. “Spates,” however, our heroes hoped would come but seldom; for it is sad to see the ruin they make, and to notice afterwards the carcases of sheep and cattle, and even horses, that bestrew the haughs, or banks, and give food to prowling dingoes and birds of the air, especially the ubiquitous crow.The ordinary state of the water, however, is best described by the word stream or rivulet, while in droughty summers it might dwindle down to a mere burn meandering from pool to pool.The country all around was plain and forest and rolling hills. It was splendidly situated for grazing of a mixed kind. But our three friends were not to be content with this, and told off the best part of it for future agricultural purposes. Even this was to be but a nucleus, and at this moment much of the land then untilled is yielding abundance of grain.Not until the place was well prepared for them were cattle bought and brought home. Sheep were not to be thought of for a year or two.With the cattle, when they began to arrive, Winslow, who was soon to pay the new settlement a visit, sent up a few really good stockmen. And now Archie was to see something of Bush-life in reality.
There was so much to be done before things could be got “straight” on the new station, that the days and weeks flew by at a wonderful pace. I pity the man or boy who is reduced to the expedient of killing time. Why if one is only pleasantly and usefully occupied, or engaged in interesting pursuits, time kills itself, and we wonder where it has gone to.
If I were to enter into a minute description of the setting-up of the stock and agricultural farm, chapter after chapter would have to be written, and still I should not have finished. I do not think it would be unprofitable reading either, nor such as one would feel inclined to skip. But as there are a deal of different ways of building and furnishing new places the plan adopted by the three friends might not be considered the best after all. Besides, improvements are taking place every day even in Bush-life. However, in the free-and-easy life one leads in the Bush one soon learns to feel quite independent of the finer arts of the upholsterer.
In that last sentence I have used the adjective “easy;” but please to observe it is adjoined to another hyphenically, and becomes one with it—“free-and-easy.” There is really very little ease in the Bush. Nor does a man want it or care for it—he goes there to work. Loafers had best keep to cities and to city life, and look for theirlittleenjoyments in parks and gardens by day, in smoke-filled billiard-rooms or glaringly-lighted music-halls by night, go to bed at midnight, and make a late breakfast on rusks and soda-water. We citizens of the woods and wilds do not envy them. We go to bed with the birds, or soon after. We go to sleep, no matter how hard our couches may be; and we do sleep too, and wake with clear heads and clean tongues, and after breakfast feel that nothing in the world will be a comfort to us but work. Yes, men work in the Bush; and, strange to say, though they go there young, they do not appear to grow quickly old. Grey hairs may come, and Nature may do a bit of etching on their brows and around their eyes with the pencil of time, but this does not make an atom of difference to their brains and hearts. These get a trifle tougher, that is all, but no older.
Well, of the three friends I think Archie made the best Bushman, though Bob came next, then Harry, who really had developed his powers of mind and body wonderfully, which only just proves that there is nothing after all, even for a Cockney, like rubbing shoulders against a rough world.
A dozen times a week at least Archie mentally thanked his father for having taught him to work at home, and for the training he had received in riding to hounds, in tramping over the fields and moors with Branson, in gaining practical knowledge at the barn-yards, and last, though not least, in the good, honest, useful groundwork of education received from his tutor Walton.
There was something else that Archie never failed to feel thankful to heaven for, and that was the education his mother had given him.
Remember this: Archie was but a rough, harum-scarum kind of a British boy at best, and religious teaching might have fallen on his soul as water falls on a duck’s back, to use a homely phrase. But as a boy he had lived in an atmosphere of refinement. He constantly breathed it till he became imbued with it; and he received the influence also second-hand, or by reflection, from his brother Rupert and his sister.
Often and often in the Bush, around the log fire of an evening, did Archie speak proudly of that beloved twain to his companions. His language really had, at times, a smack of real, downright innocence about it, as when he said to Bob once: “Mind you, Bob, I never was what you might call good. I said, and do say, my prayers, and all the like of that; but Roup and Elsie were so high above me that, after coming in from a day’s work or a day on the hill, it used to be like going into church on a week-day to enter the green parlour. I felt my own mental weakness, and I tried to put off my soul’s roughness with my dirty boots in the kitchen.”
But Archie was now an excellent superintendent of work. He knew when things were being well done, and he determined they should be. Nothing riled him more than an attempt on the part of any of the men to take advantage of him.
They soon came to know him; not as a tyrant, but simply as one who would have things rightly done, and who knew when theywerebeing rightly done, even if it were only so apparently simple a matter as planting a fence-post; for there is a right way and a wrong way of doing that.
The men spoke of him as the young Boss. Harry being ignored in all matters that required field-knowledge.
“We don’t want nary a plumbline,” said a man once, “when the young Boss’s around. He carries a plumbline in his eye.”
Archie never let any man know when he was angry; but they knew afterwards, however, that he had been so from the consequences. Yet with all his strictness he was kind-hearted, and very just. He had the happy gift of being able to put himself in the servant’s place while judging betwixt man and master.
Communications were constantly kept up between the station and the railway, by means of waggons, or drays and saddle-horses. Among the servants were several young blacks. These were useful in many ways, and faithful enough; but required keeping in their places. To be in any way familiar with them was to lose their respect, and they were not of much consequence after that. When completed, the homestead itself was certainly not devoid of comfort, though everything was of the homeliest construction; for no large amount of money was spent in getting it up. A Scotchman would describe it as consisting of “twa butts and a ben,” with a wing at the back. The capital letter L, laid down longways thus—I will give you some notion of its shape. There were two doors in front, and four windows, and a backdoor in the after wing, also having windows. The wing portion of the house contained the kitchen and general sitting-room; the right hand portion the best rooms, ladies’ room included, but a door and passage communicated with these and the kitchen.
This house was wholly built of sawn wood, but finished inside with lath and plaster, and harled outside, so that when roofed over with those slabs of wood, such as we see some old-English church steeples made of, called “shingles,” the building was almost picturesque. All the more so because it was built on high ground, and trees were left around and near it.
The kitchen and wing werepar excellencethe bachelor apartments, of an evening at all events.
Every thing that was necessary in the way of furnishing found its way into the homestead of Burley New Farm; but nothing else, with the exception of that of the guests’-room. Of this more anon.
The living-house was completed first; but all the time that this was being built men were very busy on the clearings, and the sites were mapped out for the large wool-shed, with huge adjoining yards, where the sheep at shearing-time would be received and seen to.
There were also the whole paraphernalia and buildings constituting the cattle and horse-yards, a killing and milking-yard; and behind these were slab huts, roofed with huge pieces of bark, rudely but most artistically fixed, for the men.
These last had fire-places, and though wholly built of wood, there was no danger of fire, the chimneys being of stone.
Most of the yards and outhouses were separate from each other, and the whole steading was built on elevated ground, the store-hut being not far from the main or dwelling-house.
I hardly know what to liken the contents of this store, or the inside of the place itself, to. Not unlike perhaps the half-deck or fore-cabin of a Greenland ship on the day when stores are being doled out to the men. Or, to come nearer home, if ever the reader has been in a remote and rough part of our own country, say Wales or Scotland, where gangs of navvies have been encamped for a time, at a spot where a new line of railway is being pushed through a gully or glen.
Just take a peep inside. There is a short counter of the rudest description, on which stand scales and weights, measures and knives. Larger scales stand on the floor, and everywhere around you are heaps of stores, of every useful kind you could possibly name or imagine, and these are best divided into four classes—eatables, wearables, luxuries, and tools.
Harry is at home here, and he has managed to infuse a kind of regularity into the place, and takes a sort of pride in knowing where all his wares are stored. The various departments are kept separate. Yonder, for instance, stand the tea, coffee, and cocoa-nibs, and near them the sugar of two kinds, the bags of flour, the cheeses (in boxes), the salt (in casks), soda, soap, and last, but not least, the tobacco and spirits; this last in a place by itself, and well out of harm’s way. Then there is oil and candles—by-and-bye they will make these on the farm—matches—and this brings us to the luxuries—mustard, pepper of various sorts, vinegar, pickles, curry, potted salmon, and meats of many kinds, and bags of rice. Next there is a small store of medicines of the simplest, not to say roughest, sorts, both for man and beast, and rough bandages of flannel and cotton, with a bundle of splints.
Then comes clothing of all kinds—hats, shirts, jackets, boots, shoes, etc. Then tools and cooking utensils; and in a private cupboard, quite away in a corner, the ammunition.
It is unnecessary to add that harness and horse-shoes found a place in this store, or that a desk stood in one corner where account-books were kept, for the men did not invariably pay down on the nail.
I think it said a good deal for Sarah’s courage that she came right away down into the Bush with her “little man,” and took charge of the cooking department on the station, when it was little, if any, better than simply a camp, with waggons for bedrooms, and a morsel of canvas for gentility’s sake.
But please to pop your head inside the kitchen, now that the dwelling-house has been up for some little time. Before you reach the door you will have to do a bit of stepping, for outside nothing is tidied up as yet. Heaps of chips, heaps of stones and sticks and builders’ rubbish, are everywhere. Even when you get inside there is a new smell—a limy odour—to greet you in the passage, but in the kitchen itself all is order and neatness. A huge dresser stands against the wall just under the window. The legs of it are a bit rough to be sure, but nobody here is likely to be hypercritical; and when the dinner-hour arrives, instead of the vegetables, meat, and odds-and-ends that now stand thereon, plates, and even knives and forks, will be neatly placed in a row, and Sarah herself, her cooking apron replaced by a neater and nattier one, will take the head of the table, one of the boys will say a shy kind of grace, and the meal will go merrily on.
On a shelf, slightly raised above the floor, stand rows of clean saucepans, stewpans, and a big, family-looking business of a frying-pan; and on the wall hang bright, shining dish-covers, and a couple of racks and shelves laden with delf.
A good fire of logs burns on the low hearth, and there, among ashes pulled on one side for the purpose, a genuine “damper” is baking, while from a movable “sway” depends a chain and crook, on which latter hangs a pot. This contains corned beef—very well, call itsaltif you please. Anyhow, when Sarah lifts the lid to stick a fork into the boiling mess an odour escapes and pervades the kitchen quite appetising enough to make the teeth of a Bushman water, if he had done anything like a morning’s work. There is another pot close by the fire, and in this sweet potatoes are boiling.
It is a warm spring day, and the big window is open to admit the air, else poor Sarah would be feeling rather uncomfortable.
What is “damper”? It is simply a huge, thick cake or loaf, made from extremely well-kneaded dough, and baked in the hot ashes of the hearth. Like making good oat cakes, before a person can manufacture a “damper” properly, he must be in a measure to the manner born. There is a deal in the mixing of the dough, and much in the method of firing, and, after all, some people do not care for the article at all, most useful and handy and even edible though it be. But I daresay there are individuals to be found in the world who would turn up their noses at good oat cake. Ah, well, it is really surprising what the air of the Australian Bush does in the way of increasing one’s appetite and destroying fastidiousness.
But it is near the dinner-hour, and right nimbly Sarah serves it up; and she has just time to lave her face and hands, and change her apron, when in comes Bob, followed by Archie and Harry. Before he sits down Bob catches hold of Sarah by both hands, and looks admiringly into her face, and ends by giving her rosy cheek a kiss, which resounds through the kitchen rafters like the sound of a cattle-man’s whip.
“I declare, Sarah lass,” he says heartily, “you are getting prettier and prettier every day. Now at this very moment your lips and cheeks are as red as peonies, and your eyes sparkle as brightly as a young kangaroo’s; and if any man a stone heavier than myself will make bold to say that I did wrong to marry you on a week’s courtship, I’ll kick him over the river and across the creek. ‘For what we are about to receive, the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’ Sit in, boys, and fire away. This beef is delightful. I like to see the red juice following the knife; and the sweet potatoes taste well, if they don’t look pretty. What, Sarah, too much done? Not a bit o’ them.”
The creek that Bob talked about kicking somebody across was a kind of strath or glen not very far from the steading, and lying below it, green and luxuriant at present. It wound away up and down the country for miles, and in the centre of it was a stream or river or burn, well clothed on its banks with bush, and opening out here and there into little lakes or pools. This stream was—so old Bushmen said—never known to run dry.
In the winter time it would at times well merit the name of river, especially when after a storm a “spate” came down, with a bore perhaps feet high, carrying along in its dreadful rush tree trunks, rocks, pieces of bank—everything, in fact, that came in its way, or attempted to withstand its giant power. “Spates,” however, our heroes hoped would come but seldom; for it is sad to see the ruin they make, and to notice afterwards the carcases of sheep and cattle, and even horses, that bestrew the haughs, or banks, and give food to prowling dingoes and birds of the air, especially the ubiquitous crow.
The ordinary state of the water, however, is best described by the word stream or rivulet, while in droughty summers it might dwindle down to a mere burn meandering from pool to pool.
The country all around was plain and forest and rolling hills. It was splendidly situated for grazing of a mixed kind. But our three friends were not to be content with this, and told off the best part of it for future agricultural purposes. Even this was to be but a nucleus, and at this moment much of the land then untilled is yielding abundance of grain.
Not until the place was well prepared for them were cattle bought and brought home. Sheep were not to be thought of for a year or two.
With the cattle, when they began to arrive, Winslow, who was soon to pay the new settlement a visit, sent up a few really good stockmen. And now Archie was to see something of Bush-life in reality.