"A great many fortunes were taken out of the earth around Ballarat before the placer mines were exhausted. The news of the discovery of gold in Australia spread to other countries, and thousands of people came from all parts of the world to search for it. Nearly every nationality was represented, and they came in great numbers. Just before the gold discovery there were seventy-seven thousand inhabitants in the colony of Victoria. The population doubled in a single year, and three years after the discovery the colony had two hundred and thirty-six thousand inhabitants. The gold rush properly ended when the placer mines were exhausted, although in the meantime new mines had been discovered in several localities, principally at Bendigo and Castlemaine. Ballarat was nearly deserted for a time after the placer mining gave out, and the same was the case at the other places mentioned. Then the reefs and ledges were attacked; crushing machinery was erected, and the form of work which you call quartz mining in America had its beginning. It has gone on steadily ever since and gives employment to a great many people. It also employs a great deal of money, as quartz mining requires capital, while placer mining does not. To get a fortune by quartz mining you must have a fortune to begin with, while in placer mining you need nothing more than a pick and shovel.

"Australia will continue to produce gold for a great many years to come," the gentleman continued. "New discoveries are made almost every year, and in some years half a dozen fields will be opened. The government has changed its tactics in regard to gold discoveries. It rewarded Hargreaves and Esmond for their discoveries in 1851, and it has rewarded the discoveries of other gold fields. Most of the colonial governments have a standing offer of a handsome pecuniary reward to anybody who discovers a gold field, provided there are not fewer than two hundred men working in that field six months after its discovery. This, you see, bars out all those finds that are exhausted in a few weeks, which is the case with the majority of them.

"Every little while there is an excitement over a new discovery, companies are formed for working the mines, and their stock is placed on the market. It is safe to say that, in the majority of instances, more money is made by shrewd speculators in Melbourne and Sydney manipulating the stock than is taken from the mines. A few years ago there was a wild speculation in mines in what is called the 'Broken Hill' district of Victoria, and at present there is an excitement about gold discoveries in Western Australia. According to the latest accounts from the last-named region, there is a difficulty in working the mines there on account of the scarcity of water. You cannot work a mine any more than you can run a steam-engine without water, and many people have paid very dearly to ascertain this fact."

From Ballarat our friends went to Sandhurst, which was formerly called Bendigo. They found there a mining region resembling Ballarat in its general features, but not in all of them. At Ballarat the mines are not in the town but in its suburbs, while at Sandhurst they are directly in the town itself. One of the residents remarked that there was a gold mine in every back yard, and our friends found that this was not very far from the truth.

Mining operations were carried on in the rear or by the side of the houses, and it was said that sometimes the dust of the streets was gathered up and washed to obtain the gold in it. An individual who certainly appeared credible, said that the first brick house ever built in Bendigo was torn down and the bricks crushed in order to obtain the gold in them; this gold amounted to three ounces per ton, and not only the house but its chimney yielded handsomely of the precious metal.

Bendigo yielded enormously to the placer miners of the early days. When the placer mines were exhausted the place was nearly deserted, and then came the era of quartz mining the same as at Ballarat. Thousands of men are employed at Sandhurst and in its neighborhood, working in the gold mines or in the crushing establishments connected with them. The quartz mines thus give employment to a great number of people. Some of the mines have been pushed to a great depth, one of them being twenty-six hundred feet below the surface. There seems to be an inexhaustible supply of gold-bearing rock, and it is a common saying in Victoria that a true ledge has never been exhausted.

Harry made some inquiries as to the amount of gold annually produced in Victoria, and learned that it was not far from five million pounds sterling, or twenty-five million dollars. He was further told that the cost of production amounted to very nearly the same figure; that is, including the cost of the mining machinery, the wages of laborers, and the many other expenses. It was admitted that the best mines showed a fair profit on the investment, but not enough to make a fortune in a short time.

The youths came to the conclusion that gold mining had been most profitable to the people that never engaged in it. In this number he included the brokers, bankers, storekeepers, farmers, and others who kept out of the actual business of digging gold but profited by their dealings with those who were engaged in it. Nothing so delights the owner of a large farm in Australia as to learn of a gold discovery a few miles from his place. He knows that it will give him a good market for all he has to sell, though there may be occasional thefts from his horse or cattle paddocks. Traders of all kinds get an enormous profit at the mines, and as for the brokers and bankers, there is no doubt of their ability to take care of themselves.

When Harry made the remark contained in the foregoing paragraph, Ned said that it reminded him of a story.

"Well, please tell it," said Dr. Whitney; "we are always ready for good stories."

Thus encouraged, Ned spoke as follows:—

"I was reading a day or two ago about a man who had a large cattle run in a part of Australia where he had been for several years without any near neighbors. Gold was discovered about ten miles from his place, and a good many people flocked there. The gold mines furnished an excellent market for his beef and for all the vegetables he chose to grow on his place; but, on the other hand, he suffered somewhat by the depredations of lawless characters. Horse stealing seemed to be the popular amusement among the people at the mines, and quite often horses disappeared from the estate and were never seen again.

"But they had one horse, called Stepney, that was a perfect treasure. He was kept for carriage purposes and would never let anybody mount on his back. He would stand perfectly still while being saddled, and while anything was being attached to the saddle, but the instant anybody got on his back he was thrown, and there was not a rider in Australia who could stay in the saddle more than a few seconds.

"About once in a fortnight Stepney would be missing from the paddock, but he always turned up in a day or two, and almost invariably with a saddle on his back, generally a new one, and a miner's 'swag' attached to it, and on most of the occasions the swag contained a goodly amount of gold. Once he came back with a brand new saddle and six hundred dollars' worth of gold, which nobody ever came to claim. The owner said that Stepney was the most profitable horse he ever owned. He paid for himself several times over, and whenever they ran short of saddles, all they had to do was to use Stepney as a trap and 'set' him in the paddock, with entire confidence that he would catch a saddle within a day or two."

"That recalls a story about the way the miners used to try to deceive the bushrangers," said the doctor; "I refer particularly to those who were on their way to the coast with gold in their possession. They used to bore holes in the shafts or frames of their carts and conceal the gold in these holes, and sometimes they managed to hide quantities of gold dust between the inner and outer soles of their boots. One miner took the padding out of his horse's collar and inserted eighty ounces of gold in the hollow. He jogged along the road to Melbourne, suffering a good deal of trepidation at first, but finally arrived within twenty miles of the city with his treasure, and began to feel safe.

"While he was driving slowly along with his cart he was overtaken by a man on horseback, who explained that he was in a hurry, as the police were after him for a fight he had been concerned in with another man. His horse was exhausted and he would give the miner ten pounds to exchange horses.

"As the animals were of about equal value, the miner assented and proceeded to unharness his horse. When he took off the collar the other man seized it, put it on his horse and jumped into the saddle, which he had not removed; then he rode away, to the astonishment of the angry miner, waving his hand and saying by way of farewell:—

"'The collar is all I wanted, friend. I don't care to make any horse trade now.'

"You are doubtless aware," said their Ballarat friend, "of the operations of the bushrangers, and how the police used sometimes to torture those that they captured in order to make them reveal the secret of the hiding place of their gold. They tell a story of a fight between a gang of bushrangers and the police in which the leader of the robbers, known as 'Kangaroo Jack,' was mortally wounded. He was lying on the ground dying; there could be no mistake about that. The police captain, I will call him Smith, but that wasn't his name, sat down by his side and said:—

"'Come, Jack, you are going to die and there is no help for you. Tell me where your gold is.'

"'I won't do it,' replied Jack. 'I won't tell you or anybody else!'

"Smith pressed him, but Jack was obstinate. Smith continued to urge and Jack to refuse until death sealed the bandit's lips.

"Smith was afterward telling the story to one of his fellow-officers, and remarked in conclusion:—

"'I think it was downright mean of Jack that he wouldn't tell me where his gold was. I know he had at least fifty thousand dollars' worth stowed away somewhere. He knew he couldn't take it with him, and it couldn't do him any good, and it would have been a very tidy sum for me. He couldn't have any personal ill-will to me, as I didn't shoot him myself. I think it was downright mean, don't you?'

"His friend agreed with him, and no doubt he would have been willing to share the plunder if it could have been found."



CHAPTER XII.

A SOUTHERLY BURSTER—WESTERN VICTORIA.

The day after their return to Melbourne, our friends were treated to an entertainment which, as Harry said, "was not down on the bills." It was what the Melbourneites called a "southerly burster," a storm which is peculiar to Australia, and particularly to the southern portion of it. They had already experienced showers of such force that the gutters of the streets were filled to a depth of a foot and more, and sometimes the whole street was covered. Most of the street crossings are bridged so that the water can run away with comparative ease.

The water at such times flows with terrific force. Men attempting to cross the gutters, who make a misstep, are lifted off their feet and are instantly swept down by the current, and in case they should be carried under one of the crossings they are liable to be drowned.

We will listen to Harry as he described in his journal their experience with a southerly burster.

"When we arose in the morning," said Harry, "the weather was delightful and we thought it would be a fine day for an excursion. There was not a cloud in the sky and the breeze was blowing from the northeast. A barometer hung in the hallway of the hotel, and Dr. Whitney remarked, as he came out from breakfast, that it was falling rapidly. A gentleman who was standing by his side heard the remark and said:—

"'I think we are going to have a burster; that is the way it usually begins. If you have any engagements to go out to-day and they are not absolutely imperative, you had better postpone them.'

"Ned and I overheard what he said and wondered what a burster was. We said nothing, however, as we expected to find out by practical experience.

"All through the forenoon the barometer continued to fall. The sky remained clear until a little past noon, and the wind blew gently from the northeast as before. Suddenly we saw a white cloud rolling up from the northeast and spreading over the heavens until they were completely covered. Masses of dust came with the wind, which increased in force for a time and then lulled a little.

"Suddenly the wind went around to the south and blew a gale, yes, a hurricane. It started off at about thirty miles an hour, but before it ended its visit it was blowing fully seventy miles an hour, at least that is what the papers said next day. I am told it sometimes reaches a velocity of one hundred miles an hour, and has even been known to exceed one hundred and forty miles. These tremendous winds do a great deal of damage. They drive ships ashore or overwhelm them at sea; they devastate fields and forests and level a great many buildings.

"The barometer fell rapidly in the forenoon, as I have mentioned; it was the thermometer's turn in the afternoon. The mercury stood at about ninety degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of the forenoon, and it remained so until the wind chopped around to the south. An hour after the change of wind it stood at seventy degrees, and an hour later at fifty. I am told that it sometimes drops thirty degrees in half an hour, but such occurrences are unusual.

"This is a good place to say that sudden changes in the temperature are very common in Australia, and that the change from midday to midnight is far greater than any to which we are accustomed in the United States. When we have a change of twenty or thirty degrees in a single day we regard it as unusual. What would you say to one hundred and ten degrees at noon and fifty degrees at midnight? This is quite common in the interior of Australia and not at all infrequent on the coast.

"The thermometer runs very high in this country, and it is not at all rare for it to indicate one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit. One traveler has a record of one hundred and thirty-nine degrees in the shade and one hundred and seventy-two in the sun. I am told that in South Melbourne the thermometer once made an official record of one hundred and eleven degrees in the shade and one hundred and seventy-nine degrees in the sun.

"So great is the heat of the sun at midday that travelers generally try to avoid it if they can do so. It is the plan of most people who travel on horseback, in wagons, or on foot, to start before daylight, and keep going until nine or ten o'clock. Then they halt and rest until three or four o'clock in the afternoon, when they move on and continue until late in the evening. Of course, the railways are not run on that principle, as the locomotive is not supposed to be affected by the outside temperature.

"But I am getting away from the southerly burster. The wind blew like a hurricane. It kept up this rate for about three hours, filling the air with dust so that we could not see across the street. Though the doors and windows were tightly closed, the dust found its way inside the house and was present everywhere; every article of furniture was covered with it.

"We found it in the food, we found it in our beds, and the next day when I opened my trunk to take out some articles of clothing, I actually found that the dust had worked its way inside in a perceptible quantity. One of the waiters of the hotel said, that always after a burster they found dust inside of bottles of mineral water which had been tightly corked up to the time of opening. I am inclined to doubt the truth of his assertion, particularly as he offered no documentary evidence to confirm it.

"Along towards night it came on to rain, and, oh, how it did rain! It poured as though the flood gates of the skies had all been opened at once. It rained not only cats and dogs, as the old expression has it, but lizards, scorpions, snakes, and I don't know what else, at least it did figuratively. The gutters of the streets were filled, and then we were able to see how easy it was for a man, and especially for a child, to be drowned in them. I have seen it rain hard in a good many places, but am sure I never saw it rain harder than it did at the end of that southerly burster.

"I remarked as much to a gentleman whose acquaintance we had made in the hotel, and he answered:—

"'Oh, nonsense. That is no rain at all.'

"'No rain at all,' I answered. 'Do you have worse rains than this in Australia?'

"'Why, certainly we do,' he replied. 'I have known it to rain so hard that this would be a sprinkle by comparison. I remember the 25th of February, 1873, when nine inches of rain fell here in Melbourne inside of nine hours. An inch of rain in an hour is a good deal, isn't it?'

"Ned and I admitted that it was, and then our informant continued:—

"'I happened to be in Newcastle early in 1871, when they had the greatest rainfall that I ever saw or heard of in any country. In less than three hours ten and a half inches of rain fell, and the story was that it was so thick that the fishes in the harbor could not distinguish between the rain cloud and the bay, and actually swam up half a mile or so into the air. One man said that he had a barrel with both ends knocked out, and the rain went in at the bung hole faster than it could run out at the ends.'

"I asked the gentleman how long the storm lasted, and he said that twenty-one hours elapsed between the beginning and the end of it, and during that time twenty inches of water fell, and the streets of Newcastle were like small rivers.

"The gentleman remarked, in conclusion, that it was a great pity the rainfall was not distributed more evenly, both in time and amount, than it is. Some parts of the coast get a great deal more rain than they have any use for. The floods destroy a large amount of property, and the superfluous rain flows away in the rivers, inundating large areas of ground and doing more harm than good, but through the greater part of the interior the rainfall is far less than the land requires. The ground becomes parched, the streets dry up, and the grasses wither, and the whole face of nature presents a scene of sterility. Sometimes there is no rain for long periods. There have been times when not a drop of rain fell for two years, and but for the heavy dews at night, a vast extent of land would have been absolutely turned to a desert. Cattle and sheep perished by the million, of starvation and thirst. The production of grain fell off enormously and the whole country was very seriously affected.

"Ned asked if no remedy had ever been found or proposed for this state of affairs.

"A remedy had been suggested, said the gentleman, which would save herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, but it would not save from destruction the crops in the fields.

"'What is that?' Ned asked.

"'It is a system of storing water throughout the interior of the country so as to save the precious fluid when the rainfall is excessive. There are many places, great numbers of them, where nature has so formed the ground that the storage of water would be comparatively easy. I have already begun it on my sheep run, and other sheep owners have done the same thing. It is an expensive work, but I believe it will pay in the end.'

"'There are three places on my land where broad valleys terminate at their lower ends between hills forty or fifty feet high. Now, by building a dam from one of these hills to the other, I can flood any one of these valleys to any depth I choose up to the height of the hills. It was only recently that I finished work at one of these places, and I have gangs of men busy with the other two. For the present I shall make my dams thirty feet high, and this will give me at each of the three places a lake of fresh water with about forty acres of surface area. If I can fill these lakes every winter with water, I think I will have enough to keep my sheep through the dry season, after making liberal allowance for loss by evaporation and in other ways. Of course, such a system of storing water is only practicable where the owner of a place has sufficient capital for the purpose. The poor man, with his small flock of sheep, can hardly undertake it.'

"'Preliminary surveys have been made in places where it is proposed that the colonial governments should build extensive works for saving water on a grand scale. The government would be repaid, in part at least, by selling the water to private landholders in the same way that water is sold in California, New Mexico, and other parts of the United States. I am confident that you will see a grand system of water storage in full operation in Australia before many years.'"

While on the subject of rainfall, Harry asked Ned if he knew where the heaviest annual rainfall in the world was.

Ned said he did not know, but he thought that Dr. Whitney might be able to inform them.

The question was appealed to the doctor, who paused a moment, and then said that "what might be considered a heavy rain in one place would be a light one in another. In Great Britain, if an inch of rain fell in a day it was considered a heavy rain; but in many parts of the Highlands of Scotland three inches not infrequently fall in one day. Once in the isle of Skye twelve inches of rain fell in thirteen hours, and rainfalls of five and seven inches are not uncommon. Thirty inches of rain fell in twenty-four hours at Geneva, in Switzerland, thirty-three inches at Gibraltar in twenty-six hours, and twenty-four inches in a single night on the hills near Bombay.

"The heaviest annual rainfall on the globe," continued the doctor, "was on the Khasia Hills, in India, where six hundred inches, or fifty feet, fell in a twelvemonth. Just think of it; a depth of fifty feet of water yearly, and of this amount five hundred inches fell in seven months, during the southwest monsoons."

"How do they account for such heavy rains?" Ned asked.

"It is accounted for," the doctor replied, "by the abruptness of the mountains which face the Bay of Bengal, from which they are separated by low swamps and marshes. The winds arrive among the hills heavily charged with the vapor they have absorbed from the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean. When they strike the hills and are forced up to a higher elevation, they give out their moisture with great rapidity, and the rain falls in torrents. As soon as the clouds have crossed the mountains the rain diminishes very much. Twenty miles further inland it drops from six hundred to two hundred inches annually, and thirty miles further inland it is only one hundred inches. The same conditions prevail to a certain extent in Australia. The mountain chains are near the coast. On the side next the ocean there is a liberal rainfall, but on the other side, towards the interior, the rainfall is light. As the clouds charged with vapor come from the sea to the mountains they yield their moisture freely, but, after passing the mountains, they have little left to yield."

The burster died away along in the evening, and, though the streets were wet in many places, our friends went out for a stroll. During their walk their attention was naturally drawn to the sky, which was now bright with stars. Naturally, their conversation turned to the difference between the night skies of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, which had not escaped their observation during their voyage from the east coast of Africa down to the Equator, and thence in the Southern Ocean. On this subject Harry wrote at one time in his journal as follows:—

"We found the famous Southern Cross a good deal of a disappointment. In the first place, it requires a considerable amount of imagination to make a cross out of it; very much more than is needed to make 'The Great Dipper' out of the constellation so called in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Cross consists of three stars of the first magnitude, one of the fourth magnitude, and three of the fifth, and, look at them whichever way you may, you can't make a real cross out of them, either Greek or Roman. Before I investigated the subject, I thought the Southern Cross was over the south pole, but found it is not so. The constellations of the Southern Hemisphere altogether are not as brilliant as those in the northern one. If the principal object of a traveler in this region is to see the heavens, he had better stay at home.

"An interesting feature of the southern heavens is 'The Magellan Clouds,' two white spots in the sky like thick nebulae of stars. They are nearer to the pole than the Southern Cross is, and are much used by mariners in taking observations. Quite near the pole is a star of the fifth magnitude, called 'Octantis,' and this also is used for observation purposes. It isn't so brilliant, by any means, as the pole star of the north, which is of the second magnitude; and, by the way, that reminds me of what Dr. Whitney told me in the desert of Sahara, that what we called the polar star in the north is not directly over the pole, but nearly a degree away. The real polar star is a much smaller one and stands, as we look at it, to the left of the star, which I had always believed to be the proper one."

Melbourne has a Chinese quarter like San Francisco and New York, and our friends embraced an opportunity to visit it. They found the shops closely crowded together and apparently doing an active business. There were temples, shops, and a good many stores, some of them very small and others of goodly size. The sidewalks were thronged with people, mostly Chinese, and they hardly raised their eyes to look at the strangers who had come among them. Our friends took the precaution to be accompanied by a guide, and found that they had acted wisely in doing so. The guide took them into places where they would have been unable to make their way alone, and where, doubtless, they would have found the doors closed against them.

The Chinese are very unpopular in Australia and in all the colonies. The laws against them are decidedly severe, from a Mongolian point of view. Every Chinaman landing in Victoria must pay fifty dollars for the privilege of doing so, and after getting safe on the soil he finds himself restricted in a business way, and subject to vexatious regulations. John is satisfied with very little and he usually manages to get it. He is a keen trader and always an inveterate smuggler. He is very skillful in evading the custom house, and as soon as one trick is discovered he invents another and his ingenuity seems to be boundless.

One of the industries in which the Chinese excel is that of market gardening. In driving in the suburbs of Melbourne, our friends observed numerous market gardens cultivated by Chinese, and in every instance they remarked that the cultivation was of the most careful kind. John can make more out of a garden than anybody else. He pays a high rental for his ground, but unless something very unusual happens he is pretty sure to get it back again, with a large profit in addition.

In some of the colonies the restrictions are more severe than in others. In New South Wales the laboring class of white men are politically in control of the legislature, and have enacted anti-Chinese laws of great severity. The tax upon immigrant Chinese in that colony is one hundred pounds sterling, or five hundred dollars. The naturalization of Chinese is absolutely prohibited, and ships can only bring into the ports of New South Wales one Chinese passenger for every three hundred tons of measurement. The restrictions in regard to residence and trading are very severe. The country is laid out into districts, and in each district not more than five trading Chinese are allowed to live and transact business. Steamers and sailing vessels having Chinese stewards or sailors on board are subject to seizure and fines on their arrival at Sydney, and so great have been the annoyances to this class of vessels, that they have been compelled to leave in some other port, before coming to Australia, all their Chinese employees.

The hostility to Chinese labor in Australia is similar to that on the Pacific coast of the United States, and in the States of the Rocky Mountain region. It will doubtless increase as time goes on, as it increased in the United States, until it culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of a few years ago. Eventually, the Chinese in Australia will be shut out from all occupations, and expelled or excluded from the country. A good many intelligent Australians deprecate the hostility to the Chinese, but when it comes to voting, this class of citizens is in the minority.

During a part of the gold rush, great numbers of Chinese found their way to the mines, where they were perfectly contented to work in abandoned mines and wash the earth, which had already been washed by the white men. Owing to the prejudice against them and the likelihood of interference, they rarely took up fresh claims, but contented themselves with what the white man had left. Even this form of work was considered an encroachment by the white miners, who frequently attacked the Mongolians and drove them out at the point of the pistol. Many of these attacks were accompanied by bloodshed, and if the history of Australian mining were written in full, it would contain many a story of oppression, accompanied with violence.

Our friends made a visit to the famous lake district of Victoria, where they found some very pretty scenery, and from the summit of one hill counted no fewer than fifteen lakes, some of them of no great size, while the largest measured ninety miles in circumference. Harry made note of the fact that this largest lake was called the Dead Sea. It is said to be not as salt as the famous Dead Sea near Jerusalem, but it is a great deal salter than the ocean, and no fish of any kind lives in it.

"I asked a resident of the neighborhood," said Harry, "if they had ever tried the plan of putting fish from the ocean into this Australian Dead Sea. They said they had done so, but the fish thus transported always died in a few hours, and the experiment of stocking the lake had been given up long ago.

"A curious thing that we found regarding the lakes in this part of Victoria," Harry continued, "is that some of them are salt and some fresh, and sometimes the salt lakes and the fresh ones are quite close to each other, and on the same level. We were puzzled how to account for the peculiarity and tried to learn about it. How the circumstances happened, nobody knows exactly, but the theory is that the salt in the salt lakes comes from the drainage of the rocks, and as the lakes have no outlets, the superfluous waters are carried off by evaporation. They told us that in summer these lakes sink a good deal below the level of other times of the year, and when they did so the ground left dry was thickly encrusted with salt, which the people gathered in large quantities. The market of Melbourne is supplied with salt from these lakes, and you can readily understand that it is very cheap.

"Another peculiarity of this part of Victoria is the large quantities of potatoes that are grown there. The land often yields from twenty to thirty tons of potatoes to the acre, and an acre of ground for raising potatoes will frequently sell for four hundred dollars, while it will rent for twenty-five dollars yearly. Most of the coast ports of Australia, including the great ones of Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney, are supplied with potatoes from this region.

"The potatoes are among the finest we ever saw. They are large, rich, and mealy, and when properly cooked they are simply delicious. No other part of Australia can compete with this district in potato cultivation. The excellence of this vegetable is supposed to come from the volcanic nature of the soil. All the country round here was once in a high state of ebullition, and the lakes I have mentioned are the craters of extinct volcanoes."



CHAPTER XIII.

JOURNEY UP COUNTRY—ANECDOTES OF BUSH LIFE.

Our friends accepted an invitation to go up country to visit a cattle station and also a sheep run, and to spend a week or so in the bush. They went by train as far as the railway could carry them, and were met at the station by a wagon which enabled them to finish their journey. They arrived at the station late in the afternoon, after a delightful drive through the gum-tree forest and across a small plain. It was not strictly a plain, however, as the ground was undulating, and in the hollows between the ridges there was generally a growth of trees from a quarter to a half a mile in width which broke the monotony of the landscape. The road was not the smoothest in the world, and before they had gone half way Harry and Ned both remarked that they would have excellent appetites for supper, and hoped that the meal would not be long delayed after their arrival at the cattle station.

The party received a cordial welcome from their host, Mr. Syme, who had preceded them a day in advance and sent his younger brother to the railway to meet them. About half a mile from the house they saw three or four men lying on the ground by the roadside, evidently taking a rest or waiting for something. They reminded our young friends of the individuals frequently seen in the United States, and known as "tramps," and after getting out of earshot of the party Ned asked their new acquaintance, who was escorting them, what those men were.

"Oh! those are sundowners," was the reply, and then there was a pause.

"Sundowners!" exclaimed Harry. "What is a sundowner?"

"A sundowner is what you call a tramp in America," was the reply; "and he gets his name from one of his peculiarities. It is the custom all over Australia—I mean in the country districts—to feed and lodge anybody who comes along, and if he has no money there is no charge for his entertainment. He is expected to move on in the morning the first thing after breakfast, unless we happen to have work for him and can give him employment at regular wages. If he comes along anywhere in the afternoon before sunset, he is expected to do any odd work that may be handy until supper, as a payment in part, at least, for his night's entertainment.

"Most of these fellows don't like to work," he continued, "and so they take good care not to arrive at a place before sunset. If they find they are getting too near it, they sit or lie down on the ground and wait until the sun has disappeared below the horizon. That is why we call them sundowners, as they turn up just after the sun has gone down."

"It is certainly very liberal on the part of the people in the country to feed and lodge all comers," remarked Ned.

"Well, we think it's not illiberal. It is the custom of the country which has grown up from the early days when farms were far apart and travelers were few in number. When the custom first began, the number of this sort of travelers would not exceed a dozen in a month. Nowadays we often lodge that number in a single night, and sometimes it is a pretty heavy tax on us. I don't think it will be many years before we have laws that will restrict these wanderers somewhat, just as you have tramp laws in many of the States of your Union. There is a very large number of idlers going about the country and subsisting in this way. They always pretend to be searching for employment, but whenever employment is offered, it is not the kind that they want. They are like an American tramp I heard of once, who was always looking in winter for a job at hay-making, and in summer he wanted to find employment at cutting ice. When one of these fellows gets to a sheep station, he says he knows nothing about sheep, but understands everything about cattle; at the cattle station he reverses his story, and wants a job at shepherding."

"Don't you have trouble with them sometimes?" one of the youths remarked. "Are they willing to accept what you offer them, or do they demand something better?"

"As to that," was the reply, "there is a good deal of difference among them. We don't feed them with the best that the place affords, and the majority of them accept the situation and take what we choose to give. Cold meat and bread are their usual fare, and there is always enough of that. Sometimes they make a row, and demand to be fed just in the same way that we feed our own farm hands. For instance, only last evening I was called into the men's dining-room to quell a disturbance caused by a sundowner. The travelers' table was supplied with cold meat, bread, and tea, while the table of our farm hands had on it bread and hot roast mutton. The sundowner had a knife in his hand and was threatening to kill the kitchen maid unless she gave him hot mutton instead of cold."

"What did you do about it?"

"I told him that if he could not eat cold meat he was not hungry enough to eat anything, and if he did not put that knife away one of our men would knock his head off. He became quiet at once and sat down to his supper, muttering something about not being treated like a gentleman. We would like to shut our doors altogether against this class of fellows, but there are difficulties in the way. We would be liable at times to turn away honest and deserving men who were really in search of employment, and furthermore, the revengeful scoundrels would set our buildings on fire during the night, or perhaps kill our cattle and horses. They would be less likely to do the latter than the former, as the destruction of our buildings by fire would be much easier and safer than the other proceeding. We certainly need some kind of legal restriction over these sundowners, and we will get it in the course of time."

The house at which our friends arrived was large and spacious, and its external appearance, as they approached it, betokened hospitality. It covered a considerable area of ground but was only a single story in height, with the exception of one end, where there was an upper story occupied by the female servants. The men employed at the place ate and slept in a building in the rear of the principal house, the two being connected by a kitchen and a shed. The house was substantially constructed of wood, the sides being double walled with planking, while the roof sloped gently to the front. There were gutters at the eaves to catch all the water which came down in the form of rain, and convey it to a large cistern just in the rear of the main dwelling. Their host explained that they had a fine spring close to the house, from which they usually obtained their supply of water. "This spring sometimes gives out in seasons of excessive dryness," said he, "and then we fall back upon the cistern."

"You have been long enough in Australia," he continued, "to learn the full value of water, and we are obliged to be careful in the use of it and in selecting a location for our house. In the great drought, when we had no rain for two years, we suffered exceedingly and a great many of my cattle perished for thirst. Since then I have built a reservoir for storing water, and if another drought should come, I don't think my herds will suffer as much as they did."

Dr. Whitney and our young friends were shown to the rooms they were expected to occupy during their stay. Dr. Whitney was assigned to a good-sized bedroom, while the youths were placed in another bedroom close to it and equipped with two beds. They made a brief survey of the room and concluded that they would be very comfortable. Harry remarked that it was quite as good as any room they had thus far occupied in Australian hotels. They devoted a short time to removing the dust of travel and putting themselves in a condition of cleanliness, and shortly after they appeared on the veranda, where their host was awaiting them, and dinner was announced.

The size of the dining-room indicated that the place was an hospitable one, as the table was capable of accommodating not fewer than twenty people without crowding. Harry took note of the menu which comprised their meal, and according to his memorandum it was as follows:—

"Soup of kangaroo tail, mutton pie, roast beef, potatoes, cauliflower and parsnips, hot and cold bread, plum pudding and tea. There were also some canned apricots of home production. Altogether it was a very substantial meal, excellent in quality, liberal in quantity, and well cooked throughout."

The evening was passed in front of a big fire in the large sitting-room. As the night was chilly and somewhat damp, the fire was very welcome. The time was passed in conversation concerning the cattle business, interspersed with stories of Australian life. Harry and Ned asked the permission of their host to make use of their notebooks, and their request was readily granted. Accordingly, they kept their pencils in their hands, and placed on paper anything which seemed to them particularly interesting.

Harry made note of a statement of their host concerning the cattle business and its ups and downs. One of his notes reads as follows:—

"To go into the cattle business, one ought to have a capital of not less than fifty thousand dollars, and he could use one hundred thousand to advantage. His first step is to secure a tract of land, and this he does by getting a grant from the government allowing him to occupy an area of ground several miles square at a rental of ten or twenty shillings annually for each square mile. His next step is to secure location, and to do this he travels a great deal through the interior, visiting ground that has not been taken up, and exercising his judgment as to the choice of ground. He must take care to find a place where there is good grass and good water; he wants a certain amount of timber on his land, but not too much, and the water holes must be at suitable distances apart. Many a man has come to grief in the cattle business owing to his bad selection of a location.

"A man who takes a large area of ground in this way is called a 'squatter.' You can put this down in your notebooks, young men, that a squatter in Australia is just the reverse of the same individual in America. In your country, the squatter is a man who lives upon a small tract of land which he cultivates himself, while here he is a man, as I said before, who takes a large area of ground for pastoral purposes. The equivalent of the American squatter is here called a 'selector,' and between the selectors and the squatters there is a perpetual warfare, as the selector is allowed by law to select a location for a farm on any government land, whether occupied by a squatter or not. The selectors give the squatters a great deal of trouble, and many of us think that the colonial governments have treated us very badly.

"Well, after getting our ground we proceed to stock it, and with fifty thousand dollars we can buy about twenty-five hundred head of cattle. Then we put up our buildings, employ our stockmen, and set to work. If we have good luck we can pay our expenses, almost from the beginning, by sending fat cattle to market. For the first five years we sell only fat cattle; at the end of that time we have doubled our original stock, and then we begin to sell ordinary cattle as well as fat ones. From that time on, if no mishap befalls us, we can sell twelve or fifteen thousand dollars' worth of cattle every year, including all kinds. At this rate the profits are satisfactory, and in fifteen or twenty years, a man who has started out with fifty thousand dollars can retire on eight or ten times that amount."

Harry asked what were the drawbacks to the cattle business; that is, what were the kinds of bad luck that could happen to a man who engaged in it.

"As to that," replied Mr. Syme, "there are several things which it is not possible to foresee or prevent. In the first place, nobody can foresee a great drought when cattle perish of thirst and starvation; added to this danger is that of diseases to which cattle are subject, especially pleuro-pneumonia. Whole herds may be carried away by this disease, and if it once gets established among the cattle of an estate it is very difficult to eradicate it. Sometimes it is necessary to kill off an entire herd in order to get rid of the disease, and I have heard of cattle runs that were depopulated successively two or three times by pleuro-pneumonia, and their owners ruined. Sometimes the market is very low in consequence of an over-supply, and the price cattle furnish is a very poor remuneration to stock raisers.

"Sheep farming is more profitable, on the whole, than cattle farming," he continued; "but the risks are somewhat greater in consequence of the greater liability of sheep to disease. There are several diseases peculiar to sheep which carry them off in great numbers, and they are affected by drought quite as much as cattle are. A sheep run can be started with a small capital, and you might almost say with no capital at all. For instance, a man with very little money, or practically with none at all, can find a location and squat upon it, and then go to one of the cities, and if he is known to be a respectable, honest, and industrious man and free from vicious habits, he can find somebody who will supply the capital for buying a few hundred sheep. With these sheep he can make a start, and if he is industrious and attentive to business, and has no bad luck with his flocks, he will make money rapidly. In ten years he will have a comfortable fortune; but, on the other hand, he is liable at any time to be ruined by two successive bad seasons of drought and disease. Sometimes the price of wool is so low that it leaves very little profit to the sheep farmer after paying for shepherds, shearers, and other employees, and the expense of taking his wool to the sea-coast."

Their host remarked, in conclusion, that he was afraid the good days of cattle and sheep farming had gone and would never come again. "Land has become dear," he said, "and labor unions compel us to pay high prices for stockmen and shearers, especially the latter, and the prices of wool are not as good as they used to be. The wool market of the world is low, and so is the cattle market. Since the practise of freezing beef and mutton and carrying the frozen meat to England has come into vogue the prices of meat have improved, but the supply is so abundant and the sources of it so numerous that we have not been greatly benefited by the new process. There still remains enough in either business to encourage those who are in it to continue, but the inducements for new enterprises of this kind are not great."

Some of the stories that were told about experience on cattle and sheep runs were so interesting to our young friends that they made note of them. One of the party told of the dangers surrounding the life of the stock-riders, the men who look after the herds on a cattle estate.

"He has some hard duties to perform," said the narrator. "He gets his breakfast early in the morning and starts out at once, mounted on horseback, and with a horse that is more or less unruly. Each stock-rider, or stockman, as we call him, has a particular part of the run assigned to him, and every morning he goes along the boundary of it, and if his own cattle have strayed across the line, he drives them back again; likewise, if he finds his neighbor's cattle have strayed into his territory, he drives them out. He is expected to show himself to his cattle at least once a day, to accustom them to the sight of men, and also to train them to go where they are wanted whenever he cracks his whip and rides in among them.

"The group of cattle belonging to each stockman is called a 'herd,' and he is expected to train them so that they will recognize his authority. A bunch of fifty or so is called a 'mob,' and it takes several mobs to make up a herd. All over the run, at intervals of two or three miles, are places where the cattle assemble when they hear the stockman's whip. These places are called 'cattle camps'; they are open spaces of level ground and are always near water; in fact, many of them are used as regular watering places for the mobs and herds of cattle. Occasionally the animals are driven into these camps, either for the purpose of branding the calves or selecting cattle to be sent to market. You will have an opportunity of seeing one of these to-morrow, as a man arrived here to-night who is buying cattle to take to Melbourne.

"Well, the stock-rider is on horseback for the greater part of the day. Sometimes he takes his dinner with him and sometimes he comes back to the station to get it, and in the afternoon goes to a different part of his section. Sometimes he does not come back at all, and the next morning a search is made for him. Of course there is now and then a man who runs away and leaves his employment, but this is rarely the case, as there is no occasion for him doing so unless he has committed some offense."

The youths listened in breathless silence, waiting for what would come next.

"There really ought to be two men riding together at all times, so that if a mishap occurs to one of them, the other can help him out of his trouble, and, if unable to do so, can go for assistance; and we generally send out a black boy on horseback with each stockman. A few months ago one of our stockmen, who had gone out alone, failed to come home at night, and we were at once apprehensive that something had happened to him. His horse came back along about midnight, and the next morning several of us started out to find him. We tried to make use of the intelligence of the horse to guide us to the place where he had left his master, but, unfortunately, it was an animal that he had ridden only a few times and there was no attachment whatever between man and beast. We rode along the boundary where we knew he was accustomed to go, but did not find him. We spread out over all the ground we could cover and shouted continually, in the hope that he would hear us and answer. We made a complete circuit of the portion of the run in his charge, and, finding no traces of him, we struck off haphazard across the middle of it. We kept up our shouting and finally heard a faint answer.

"Then we rode in the direction of the sound, and in fifteen or twenty minutes we reached the man's side. It seems that his horse had stumbled over a fallen log so violently as to pitch the rider over his head. In falling, the man had the misfortune to break his leg. The horse stood and looked at him a few minutes while he tried to call the animal to his side, but to no purpose. The beast threw his head and then his heels into the air and trotted off. He was soon out of sight in the bush and the stockman was left alone, disabled in the way I tell you.

"There was no water in this vicinity and he had no food with him, and he could not walk or stand on account of his broken leg. He could crawl slowly, but only a short distance at a time. He knew that he was out of the regular track of riders, and it might be days or weeks before he would be discovered. He suffered great pain in his injured limb, and very soon the tortures of thirst began, to be followed later in the day by those of hunger.

"All the rest of the day and all through the night he lay there in great suffering and wondering if relief would ever come. Along towards morning he heard a rustling in the grass near him, and then other similar sounds, which he soon concluded were caused by snakes. When daylight came he found that his fears and horrors were realized. Moving around him were several serpents, and they manifested a tendency to approach nearer and nearer. Some of them went away as the sun rose and the full light of day shone upon him, but others remained in his immediate neighborhood. He beat the ground with the butt of his whip in the hope of scaring them away; his effort was partially successful but not wholly so. One large snake came close to his side and actually traversed his body. He dared not make a motion, for fear the serpent would turn upon him and inflict a fatal bite. He lay there as still as a block of marble till the snake, having satisfied his curiosity, glided away into the grass.

"All through the afternoon and until we found him, the reptiles remained there. They seemed to understand that the man was disabled, and evidently they were determined to take their own time in enjoying his sufferings. This was the state of affairs when we found him. He said that when he heard our call he almost feared to reply, lest it should rouse his unpleasant neighbors and cause them to take the aggressive.

"We killed two of the snakes not a dozen yards from where the man was lying, and if we had made a vigorous search, it is probable that we could have despatched more of them. We brought the man to the house as quickly as possible, improvising a rude sort of litter, which was carried, with the man upon it, by two of our blacks. Two of us relieved them occasionally, when they were wearied of carrying the burden. In a short time the man was well again, but he said that the horrors of that night were too much for him, and he would seek some other occupation than that of stock-rider. He left us as soon as he recovered, and I don't know what became of him."

"That reminds me," said another of the party, "of the case of a man who met with a similar accident, being thrown from his horse and getting a broken leg. The place where he fell happened to be near a large ant hill, and in a few moments he was covered with the terrible black ants that we have here in Australia. He was horribly bitten by them all over his body, but principally on head and hands, the other parts being somewhat protected by his clothing. After two or three hours of torture he managed to crawl away from his awful position, but for several hours afterwards the ants continued their attacks; and when he was found by one of his fellow-stockmen, his face was so swollen that he could not see, and he was barely able to articulate. Face and hands became a mass of sores, and it was weeks before he recovered. When he got well, his face was pitted like that of the victim of an attack of smallpox, and he suffered for a long time with a partial paralysis of his limbs. I have heard of one or two other instances of the same sort, and can hardly imagine anything more terrible."



CHAPTER XIV.

LOST IN THE BUSH—AUSTRALIAN HORSES.

"Another of the gentlemen," wrote Harry in his notebook, "told us a story about a young woman, with a child in her arms and an older child at her side, being lost in the bush." She had been on a visit to an acquaintance who lived about four miles away, and was to start for home in the afternoon of a certain Friday, having gone there in the forenoon of the same day. She did not reach home in the evening, and it was thought at first that she had concluded to remain until Saturday. Not until Sunday did her husband go to the house where she had been visiting, and there he ascertained that she had left the place on Friday afternoon, as agreed, and carried no provisions except a pound of butter which she was taking home for her husband.

"It was at once concluded," said the gentleman, "that she had missed her way and been lost in the bush; and when one is thus lost, it is very hard to find the way out again. The general features of the landscape are so similar that it is very difficult to distinguish one part from another, and the alarm and perplexity natural on finding oneself in such a situation increases the danger which attends it by robbing the wanderer of the presence of mind which is so necessary in such an emergency. When the sun is obscured by clouds the most experienced traveler is liable to stray and become lost, and even when the sun is shining it is not every one who can take advantage of its position to guide him out of trouble. The course of the streams in a well-watered country is of great use in guiding an inexperienced traveler, but Australian streams, like most others, wind about a great deal, and make the road along their banks a very long one.

"It was the rainy season of the year when this woman was lost, and the streams were flooded. If she had followed the creek which would have led her to her home, she would have been compelled to keep to the high ground on either side of its valley, as the low, flat land was covered with water. The weather was cold and wet and the winds were keen and piercing. There was not the least supply of nourishment to be obtained in the bush, and when we heard late on Monday what had happened, we all felt that the unhappy wanderers must have perished from hunger and cold. Still, there was a possibility that they might yet survive, and, as it was too late for us to start that day, we determined to set out on Tuesday morning in search of them. We sent off to the nearest police station and obtained the assistance of several blacks who had been trained to the police service. You have probably heard about the wonderful skill of these people in following a track, and as soon as they arrived on the ground we set them at work.

"All day Tuesday these native trackers sought diligently to find traces of the missing ones, but none could be discovered. Then on Wednesday morning we renewed the search, covering as much ground as possible and examining it with the greatest care, occasionally discharging a revolver in the hope that its sound might be heard, and frequently shouting the Australian 'coo-ee,' which can be heard at a great distance. We returned home completely discouraged and gave up the wanderers for dead, being satisfied that any further search would be useless.

"But on reaching home we heard news that gave us encouragement. A woodchopper returning from his work told us that he found on a hill, some distance away, a rude mia-mia or wind shelter made of the branches of a wild cherry tree. He said it was not like those usually put up by the blacks, nor were there any traces of fire near it, which would certainly have been the case if it had been a native mia-mia. We started at once, under the guidance of the workman, to inspect the place for ourselves, and on examining the shelter carefully we felt sure that it had been put up by the lost woman. A few pieces of a Melbourne newspaper were lying on the ground and a strip of calico had been fastened to the bushes, evidently in the hope of attracting attention.

"We collected these little articles carefully and took them to the husband, who instantly identified the strip of calico as belonging to a gown his wife had worn, and he also remembered that she had taken a Melbourne newspaper with her. He was greatly excited at the sight of the articles, and so were we. It was too late to do anything that day; in fact, it was dark before we reached home, and so we made all preparations for an early start on Thursday morning. We were on the way soon after daylight, and the native trackers expressed the fullest confidence in their ability to find the missing wanderers, now that they were able to start on the track.

"We first went to the mia-mia, or wind shelter, and then took a course to the northeast, walking over a succession of low ranges and shallow gullies where the water often reached up to our knees. The trackers were much disappointed, as the amount of water which spread over the country made it impossible for them to follow the trail. We passed through thick scrubs and prickly plants, and over sharp rocks which were rough walking even for men; what must they have been for the woman and her children?

"We continued our search for several hours, and had almost resolved to give it up, when one of our party fired at a kangaroo which he had disturbed, and which fled before us. The animal fell wounded, and as we were advancing towards it, we thought we heard a distant coo-ee. We stood still to listen, and faintly, yet quite distinctly, it was repeated. We walked on with great eagerness in the direction whence the sound appeared to come, and every little while we coo-eed and waited for an answer to assure us that we were on the right track. We did not get an answer every time, and when we did it was not a strong one; but there was no mistaking the sound, and we realized each time that we were getting nearer the spot where it was made.

"We reached the edge of a gully thickly overgrown with tangled scrub about twelve feet high. We pressed forward through this scrub, wading occasionally through the water, and pushing aside the last bushes, found ourselves at the edge of a small open plain. There we saw, standing at a little distance, a gaunt, ragged woman with a child in her arms. As she caught sight of us she turned and fled; either she mistook us for black fellows, or the surprise and relief of obtaining help had turned her brain. We shouted loudly to her to stop, and as our voices fell on her ear she stood still and we approached. She looked at us with a half-crazed expression in her eager, gleaming eyes; her cheeks were thin and sunken, and her whole appearance was one of great wretchedness.

"We gave her some tea which she drank greedily, and it revived her somewhat. Seeing that she had only one of her children with her, the youngest, we asked where the other was, and she led us to a large, hollow tree in which she placed the little girl. The poor child's feet were so cruelly cut and blistered that she could no longer walk, and the mother, hoping to reach home and find help, had thought best to leave her and travel on with the other child. She had built up the opening of the tree with logs and brush-wood in the hope of protecting the child against the attacks of the wild dogs, but when her preparations were complete the little girl wept so piteously that the distracted mother could not consent to leave her alone. So she made up her mind to stay there and die with her children.

"Just as she had reached this conclusion she heard the report of the rifle, and with all her remaining strength she uttered the coo-ee which brought relief to her. She did not faint or lose her self-possession, and she astonished us all by her strength. She would not wait to allow us to send for a dray or other conveyance, but insisted that she could walk with us; it was a walk of seven miles, but she went on bravely, carrying her boy, who would not leave her arms. The men by turns carried the little girl, and offered to take the boy, but she would not give him up.

"She solemnly declared that neither she nor the children had found anything to eat during the time they were in the bush. On the first night, she divided the pound of butter between the children, and ate nothing herself. Her only sustenance for the whole time had been water, and it was the only sustenance of the children after the butter was consumed. Every morning they had begun to wander, hoping to reach home before night; and every night, as the darkness closed in, they huddled together, cold, and hungry, and footsore, on the wet ground, and with no shelter except a few scanty bushes.

"The children slept fairly well, but the mother said she listened through the greater part of every night, hearing the howling of the wild dogs around them, and constantly dreading their attacks. She said she heard the report of our rifles on the first day of our search, but unhappily the wind was blowing directly from us towards her, and consequently we were unable to hear her answering calls, though she had strained her voice to the utmost to make herself heard. She had been almost frantic with despair, knowing that help was so near at hand and yet beyond her reach. She thought, and we agreed with her, that another day in the bush would have ended their lives, or at any rate that of the little girl."

As the narrator paused, Harry asked if the woman recovered her health and strength completely.

"She recovered her strength very soon," was the reply, "but her mind was affected by her exposure and sufferings, and she was never quite herself again, mentally. The children recovered completely after a few weeks of nourishment, and the little girl who was so near dying in that hollow tree has since grown up and married."

"I think it is time for a story of less mournful character," said one of the party.

"By all means," said another; "let us have one."

"Well, here it is," was the reply.

"At the station of a wealthy squatter a party assembled one evening for a good time and a supper. There were young men and young women, as well as men and women who were not altogether young, who had been invited for miles around, and they had a jolly time, you may well believe me. Some of the young fellows, wishing to have some fun, disguised themselves in rough clothes, blackened their faces, and frowzed up their hair in the roughest kind of way. Then they suddenly appeared at the door of the large room, and the cry of 'Bushrangers!' was raised. Some of the ladies fainted in alarm, and all were more or less frightened. The joke was not kept up very long, as the counterfeit bushrangers were not good impersonators, and were speedily detected by their friends. There was a great deal of fun and laughter over the trick that had been played, and then the performers in the scheme resumed their ordinary dress and continued in the games with the others.

"An hour or so later, rough voices were heard outside of the house, and soon there appeared in the doorway six or eight rough-looking men with begrimed faces, untrimmed hair, and very shabby-looking garments, who entered the hall with a very determined manner. Some of the party burst out laughing, and exclaimed, 'Bushrangers again!' declaring that they would not be fooled a second time. Some of the others had an instinctive perception that this time the bushrangers were real ones."

The narrator paused, and Harry asked if that was the case.

"It was exactly," was the reply. "The men were notorious bushrangers who had been troubling that part of the country for some time. The robbers drew revolvers and ordered the men to 'bail up!' (hold up their hands) which they did in a hurry, and then they were commanded to stand in a row with their faces next to the wall.

"Then the bushrangers ordered the ladies to provide them with refreshments, while one was commanded to sit at the piano and entertain them with music. No one was allowed to leave the room except under the escort of a bushranger, for fear that word would be sent to the police.

"The scoundrels ate and drank freely, and then took possession of all the watches, jewelry, money, and other valuables in the possession of the party. After making their collection they left the place. Word was sent to the police as soon as possible, but as the police station was several miles away, the information was of no practical value."

"Were the scoundrels ever caught?" inquired Ned.

"Yes, they were eventually caught and hanged," was the reply. "They troubled that region for some time. The inhabitants dared not pursue them, for fear of their vengeance, though all wanted to be rid of them. Four men came from Melbourne with authority for taking these robbers, dead or alive, and with the promise of a large reward. It was impossible to keep their errand a secret, and none of the people dared give them any assistance in consequence of their dread of what the bushrangers might do if they heard of it. I know of one instance where these four men applied to a squatter for a night's lodging and supper. He dared not let his family know about the men being there, but lodged them in an out-building, and with his own hands carried the food to them for their supper."

"And did these four men capture the bushranger gang?" queried Harry.

"Not by any means," was the reply. "They were riding one day along the road, when they suddenly found themselves face to face with the bushrangers. A fight followed as a matter of course, and every one of the four was killed. When the corpses were discovered, one of them was found in a kneeling posture, as though he had died in the act of begging for mercy. A ten-pound bank note was found sticking in a wound in his breast, and evidently the bushrangers put it there, to show that in this instance, at least, their object was revenge and not plunder.

"That the bushrangers were a bad lot," continued the gentleman, "no one will deny, but in many instances they showed chivalry and appreciation of bravery. It was rare, indeed, that they ill-treated women or children, and it was also very rarely the case that they committed murder except in self-defense or for revenge. This led a good many sentimental people to regard them rather in the light of dashing heroes than that of downright criminals. You have probably heard of Captain Melville, have you not?" he asked, turning to Harry and Ned.

The youths nodded, and said the name of that famous bushranger was familiar to them.

"Well, it once happened," said their informant, "that Captain Melville had in his power a man whom, of all others, he had most occasion to dread,—an officer of high standing in the police force, at that time engaged in pursuit of the robber, whom he declared he would take alive or dead. This officer was riding one day alone and slightly armed, when he suddenly met Melville with his entire gang. The police uniform readily told the rank of the officer, and it happened that Melville and several of his men were familiar with the officer's face.

"He was immediately surrounded and disarmed; his hands were tied behind his back, and his captives took him triumphantly to their camp. When the camp was reached, the prisoner was bound to a wagon wheel while his captors held a counsel to decide what to do with him. The officer was noted for his courage, and when Melville came near him, he was taunted by his captive for his cowardice in taking him at the time when he was defenseless and alone.

"Melville became angry at the taunt, and, walking towards his prisoner, he placed a loaded revolver at his head and said, 'Say another word and I'll blow your brains out.'

"'You dare not do it,' replied the officer, and he looked with an unflinching eye at the robber.

"Melville's eyes glared, and probably the slightest show of fear on the part of the officer would have provoked a fatal shot.

"Melville held the pistol at the prisoner's head for a few seconds and then lowered it, saying, as he did so, 'You are too brave a man to be shot,' and then he turned and walked away. The officer afterwards managed to escape and reach Melbourne safely. The supposition is that he was assisted in escaping by one of the bushrangers who was tired of life on the road and desirous of leaving it. The officer was able to promise him immunity from punishment in return for his service in aiding the latter's escape."

"That reminds me of a story I heard not long ago," said Harry.

"A lawyer in Australia was once defending a man whose family antecedents and record were anything but good. Ignoring this, he made a most touching plea about the gray-haired parents in England waiting to celebrate Christmas with their returned wanderer. The jury found the man guilty, however, and the judge, after sentencing him, remarked that the learned counsel would have his wish; the convicted client was going to the same prison where father and mother were already serving sentences. Their Christmas would be passed under the same roof."

Other stories were told during the course of the evening, but we have no room for any more of them. When the last story was given, the youths looked at their watches and were surprised to find the hour so late. They immediately retired to their room and slept soundly, or at least Ned did. Harry said he was disturbed somewhat by dreams of snakes, bushrangers, unruly cattle, and horses, and of being lost in the bush. Evidently the disturbance was not serious, as he was out at an early hour with Ned to investigate the place and learn the peculiarities of an up-country station in Australia. Here is what he wrote concerning what he saw and heard before the announcement of breakfast:—

"The sights and sounds were not altogether unlike those of a farm in New England, but there were many more of them, in consequence of the greater size of the station. A farm in New England covering two or three hundred acres of ground would be considered a large one. This station covers an area ten miles square, or one hundred square miles. They have five thousand head of cattle upon it and more than one hundred horses. Most of the cattle, in fact, nearly all of them, are fully half wild. The domesticated ones comprise a few yokes of oxen and a small herd of milch cows, and even the cows are nowhere near as tame as the same animals would be in New England. We went out to the milking yard and witnessed the operation of milking three or four cows which had been driven in from the paddock. Not one of the creatures would stand quietly to be milked, as a well-mannered cow should do, and each one had to be driven, led, or pulled into a frame or cage something like the frame in which oxen are shod. When the cow was thoroughly secured in this way, with one fore leg tied up so that she could not lift either of her hind legs, the milkmaid, who was a big, rough-looking man, proceeded to milk the animal. When the operation was concluded, another cow was brought up and put through the same process.

"I asked if they had any cows that would stand peaceably and submit to the milking process. They answered me that they had such cows occasionally, but not often; and the man with whom I talked seemed to be rather proud of the circumstance, that Australian cows were more high-spirited than American ones.

"The stockmen had had their breakfast and were about starting for their daily rounds. Some fifty or sixty horses had been driven in from a paddock and enclosed in a yard large enough for five times their number. A man went into the yard to select his horse for the day's riding, and having singled out the animal, he made several ineffectual attempts to capture him. When he approached the group, it divided and started off for a different part of the yard. Then the man was joined by another, and the horses at once concluded that it was time for their fun to cease. They submitted quietly to being bridled and saddled, and one after another they were led out of the yard as soon as this operation was complete.

"One of the stockmen remarked that he would like to see one of us youngsters go in there and get a horse.

"I replied that I had heard too many stories of the character of Australian horses to induce me to make the attempt.

"You are very wise not to do so," he answered. "They would have fun with you by the hour, and then you would not be able to lay hands on one of them. Whenever we get a new chum that is a green hand, we have a jolly time seeing him work. He goes inside with one of the black boys, and between them they manage to get a horse off into a corner. Then the new chum takes his bridle over his arm and approaches the horse, talking to him all the time. Australian horses don't understand that sort of thing, and you might as well talk to the surf on the sea-coast as to one of them. Just as the new chum gets up to within about four feet of the horse's neck, the beast spins around on his hind legs, and is off like a shot. He kicks and prances, and sometimes he lies down and rolls, and all the time he is saying to himself, 'What a jolly time I am having.'

"Then the new chum and the black fellow try it on again, and with the same result. All the old hands sit around the fence and have a good laugh, and we let the new chum keep at it until our sides are sore. After awhile we agree that we have had enough of it, and then we turn in and catch the horse and saddle him in about half no time.

"But there is more fun to come," continued the stockman, "and that is when the new chum tries to ride. He gets into the saddle, and just as he gets fairly seated the horse begins to buck-jump. Perhaps you don't know what buck-jumping is?"

"I have heard of it," I said. "In fact, I have seen what was said to be a very good performance of it, and that was in Buffalo Bill's show."

"How high up in the air did the horses throw the fellows in the show?"

"Oh, a little ways," I answered; "enough to pitch them out of the saddles and bring them to the ground."

"Oh, nonsense," said the stockman; "you wait till you see an Australian horse send a new chum up into the air. I've seen a fellow tossed up so high that he didn't look bigger than a dog. He must have gone up fifty feet, at least, and he came down astraddle of the horse again."

The man said this with all possible gravity, but I thought I could see a twinkle at the corner of his eye. I smiled politely, as I did not want to contradict him, and, at the same time, did not wish him to believe that I swallowed his preposterous story.

"Some of our horses," he continued, "will stand still and allow themselves to be saddled, and then they will take a long breath, swell themselves up with air, burst the girths, and throw the saddle up at least twenty feet above them, and all this in one motion."

"Seems to me, I have heard of something of the kind in America," I remarked. "As I remember the story, they first fed the horse with self-raising flour, and then gave him a pail of water to drink."

The man stood silent for a moment, and then said, "You'll do, youngster; you ought to stay in Australia."



CHAPTER XV.

EXPERIENCES AT A CATTLE STATION—A KANGAROO HUNT.

"They breed good horses in Australia," continued Harry in his journal. "As a general thing, however, the horses of this part of the world are vicious, and it is no wonder, when we consider that they are harshly treated all their lives, and very rarely hear a kind word. The owner of the cattle run gave orders that the gentlest animals should be reserved for the visitors to ride, and I have no doubt that they were so reserved. We found them anything but gentle, from our point of view, but managed to get through the day without being thrown out of the saddles. They danced and pirouetted more than was to our liking when we first mounted, and it was only after we had ridden several miles that their behavior was what might be called quiet.

"The process of breaking horses to the saddle here is interesting, though it is rough and cruel. The horses are kept all together in a large paddock; some of them already broken, and some that have never known saddle, bridle, or halter. Every morning they are driven up by the black boys. Selections are made of the animals required for the day's riding, and then the remainder are turned loose into the paddock again. The daily visit to the paddock accustoms the younger horses to the presence of men, so that they are not altogether wild when they are taken in hand for breaking.

"There is a class of men going about the country whose business it is to break horses at so much a head; usually two pounds, or ten dollars. The whole herd is driven into the yard, and then the horse breaker proceeds to his work. With the aid of two or three black fellows he lassoos a horse and puts a strong halter on him. Then, while the black fellows hold the animal, he is saddled and bridled, and the breaker gets on his back. The halter is gathered up around the horse's neck, and at the word of command the black fellows jump away from him.

"Then begins a lively performance of bucking and jumping, the rider all the time clinging to the saddle with his knees. Sometimes the horse tries to lie down and roll in order to free himself from his incumbrance; he succeeds occasionally, but as a general thing he does not. Even should he manage to shake off his ride, the latter is on the creature's back again before he gets fairly on his feet, and then the kicking and jumping are renewed. The rider keeps at the horse until he has subdued him and ridden him several times around the yard; possibly he may take a spin out into the paddock and back again, but he does not always do so. The great point is to conquer at the first riding, and a good horse-breaker never stops until he has done so.

"After this lesson is over the horse is left with the saddle on his back, and it is not taken off until he is turned into the paddock at night. The next day he receives another lesson of the same sort, and after a few days of this kind of training he is pronounced properly broken, and fit 'for a lady to ride.' I shouldn't want any lady of my acquaintance to venture on the back of such an animal.

"I mustn't forget a trick that these horse-breakers have, and that is, of getting on the back of a bucking steed, placing a half-crown piece between each thigh and the saddle, and allowing the animal to go through all the performance she chooses to, without once displacing the coins. Exactly the same thing is done by the rough riders of our western States and Territories, with the difference that they use half dollars instead of half crowns.

"We found the morning air around the station very agreeable. A gentle breeze was blowing, and we caught the odor of the fragrant eucalyptus mingled with that of the numerous flowers which ornamented and brightened the grounds near by. We could hear the notes of several birds, and louder than all the rest of their voices was that of the laughing jackass, which has already been described. One of these birds perched on the fence of the yard where the men were catching horses, and Ned and I approached within twenty feet of him before he flew away. Before doing so he treated us to a very jolly laugh, and both of us laughed, too, in concert with him.

"Breakfast was announced, and we went in to enjoy it. We had oatmeal, mutton chops, and ham and eggs, with plenty of bread and butter, and honey. I looked around the table for coffee, but saw none. There was a large pot of tea, and Ned and I took it without a word of objection, though we would have preferred coffee. We were already aware that coffee is but little used in the country districts of Australia, tea being the almost universal beverage, for the reason that it is more stimulating than coffee and better for a steady diet. It is carried about and prepared much more easily than coffee, and this, no doubt, is one cause of its popularity. In the old days of placer mining, every miner carried at his waist a 'billy,' or tin cup for drinking purposes, and he regarded a billy of tea as a very important part of any meal. At the present day, a goodly proportion of sundowners and other Australian pedestrians carry billies at their waist belts and treasure them with great care."

We will listen to Ned as he tells the story of their ride among the cattle.

"While we were at breakfast," said Ned in his journal, "the horses were saddled and bridled and brought up to the front of the house. There were seven of us altogether. Our host, Mr. Syme, and his two brothers, a black fellow called Jack, Dr. Whitney, Harry, and myself. Our host and the doctor led the way; John, the elder of his brothers, rode with Harry, the younger, William, with me, and the black fellow by himself. That is to say, the black fellow, Jack, brought up the rear, to be ready for use in case of an emergency. We found our companions well informed, and ready to give us any information in their power.

"For a mile or so we rode through an open, undulating region where the grass was fairly abundant, though not densely so. One of our escorts explained that the season had been a little dry, and the grass was not appearing as well as usual. After passing this open stretch we entered a forest principally of gum trees, whose white stems extended up a long distance into the air before throwing out any limbs. From the gum forest we passed into a stretch of scrub, and then entered a valley, through which ran a small stream. The banks of the stream were fringed with trees, and the open parts of it were thickly covered with grass. A mob of some fifty or sixty cattle was grazing in this valley, and by the orders of our host, the black fellow rode in among them, cracking his whip loudly, and starting them off with heads and tails in the air.